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Virginia (Franke) Kleist ’74: Trailblazing as a Student and Educator

When Virginia (Franke) Kleist ’74 stood on stage to shake the hands of Wayne State University’s latest crop of Mike Ilitch School of Business graduates, she took notice of each student’s visual excitement. “What fun it was to see these students standing there at 21 or 22 years old, realizing that they did it — they earned their degree, and they each just smiled,” Kleist says.

Summer 2024 Magazine Cover

This story was originally featured in the Summer 2024 issue of Shady Side Academy Magazine. Read the full issue online now.

Kleist is currently the Dean of the Mike Ilitch School of Business and Professor of Technology, Information Systems, and Analytics, but 50 years ago, she was a smiling young woman receiving a high school diploma at Shady Side Academy — one of the first three women in history to do so.

Kleist entered her senior year at Shady Side in 1973, the first year women were accepted as Senior School students. Although she was just one of three women in the entire senior class, Kleist says her sex was simply a non-issue. “Everyone went above and beyond to make the transition to coeducation go smoothly,” she says. “I was very comfortable and had a great experience.”

In that one year, Shady Side’s teachers had a profound impact on Kleist’s life and future endeavors. “I took Dr. Bernard J. Sauers’s Economics class my entire senior year, and I loved it. I worked really hard in that class,” she recalls. “I went on to get a master’s degree in economics and my research and the work I did for my Ph.D. dissertation are very much centered in economics. A lot of the work I’ve done has a lens that looks back to that Shady Side class.”

After majoring in economics and history at Duke University, Kleist worked in telecommunications network management for major companies, including PNC Corporation and GTE (now Verizon). She earned an M.B.A. from Marquette University, as well as a master’s in economics and a Ph.D. and master’s in information systems management from the University of Pittsburgh.

“I’m really interested in complex technologies,” Kleist says, particularly information goods, which are goods that aren’t used up when consumed, and can be copied or resold (e.g., computer software or music). “Intellectually, I’m often thinking about the intersection of economics and technology, and that goes right back to the ideas I first studied in Dr. Sauers’s economics class,” she says.

Following a decade in the technology-related corporate world where she was often the only woman in the room, Kleist shifted to education, first as director of the M.B.A./M.S. in management information systems dual degree program at the University of Pittsburgh. She then spent 23 years at West Virginia University—in a number of roles related to management information systems and graduate studies—before going to Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business, a tier-one research-level business school where, as Dean, she oversees 4,200 students seeking bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, M.B.A.s, and Ph.D.s.

Kleist points out that her program has a diverse student body, with many first-generation students attempting to earn the first degree in their family line. “It’s an interesting space to be in, helping facilitate education to help families achieve prosperity. These students have the ability to drive success not just for their lives, but for their children, and their children’s children,” Kleist says. “I think what I do has an impact. I like the work of 56 SHADY SIDE MAGAZINE “Intellectually, I’m often thinking about the intersection of economics and technology, and that goes right back to the ideas I first studied in Dr. Sauers’s economics class.” education centered on those for whom it’s a little harder to obtain an education.”

Kleist’s borderless approach to education has taken her into classrooms around the world. As a three-time Fulbright Specialist awardee, Kleist taught cybersecurity courses in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, and Ufa, Russia for two of those awards — places she chose due to a longstanding interest in Russian history spurred by a Russian literature class she took under teacher Angela Irvine at Shady Side.

Though her studies and her work have taken her to many academic institutions around the world, Kleist’s senior year at Shady Side remains a pivotal marker in a life spent trailblazing for future generations. “When I won the International Conference on Information Systems Outstanding Dissertation Award, I wrote a letter to Dr. Sauers. My dissertation was heavily economically flavored, and I wanted to let him know that I had taken his class, and here I was at 43 receiving my Ph.D.,” she says. “That was the outcome, many years later, of taking that class.”