Business school dean in Minneapolis positioning Carlson to compete globally.

Byline: F & C Staff

Rumor has it Dean Alison Davis-Blake doesn't sleep. The highest-ranking female dean of a U.S. business school, Davis-Blake won't confirm or deny that.

I have no spare time, she offers, perched in her spacious, glass-walled corner office at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.

Clearly.

Under Davis-Blake's first 22 months of leadership, Carlson has expanded undergraduate enrollment dramatically while maintaining student quality, recruited and retained top faculty during a national shortage, increased the number of MBA students studying abroad by 55 percent, commissioned first-ever external reviews of the school's academic programs and completed fundraising and construction for a new building on time and under budget, the dean adds.

Davis-Blake, 49, arrived in Minnesota in July 2006 from the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business, also a top-ranked school. Her Carlson tenure has coincided with soaring B-school enrollments -- full-time MBA applications have been up 25 percent in both 2007 and 2008 -- and an ever-increasing number of MBA programs in the Twin Cities, a national shortage of college instructors and an ever-changing global business climate.

Those…