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Muskingum Alumnus Debu Purohit to Provide Keynote Address at May Commencement
Debu Purohit

Muskingum University’s May Commencement will take place on Saturday, May 6 at 2 p.m. in the Anne C. Steele Center. Debu Purohit (‘83) will be providing the keynote address. The University has 217 undergraduate and 33 graduate students who will have degrees conferred at Commencement.

Debu Purohit ’83 is the Ford Motor Company Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He served on the Duke University Priorities Committee from 2016-22, and as the committee’s chair from 2019-22. He also served as a member of the Resources Committee of the Duke University Board of Trustees from 2019-22. 

He earned his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests are primarily in the marketing of technology products and durable goods. His dissertation, “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Product Obsolescence,” won the Best Dissertation Award given by the American Marketing Association.  He has also won the John Little Award for the best paper from the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. His research appears in journals such as Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Marketing Research.

He has been honored with many teaching awards including the Daimler-Chrysler Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching in Duke’s fulltime MBA and Executive MBA programs. He currently teaches a course on the Marketing of Innovations. He is also involved in executive education and has worked closely with companies such as ABB, Bayer, Daewoo, Ericsson, Ford, IBM, Kimberly Clark, Johns Manville, Lenovo, Microsoft, Parkson, Progress Energy, Red Hat, Siemens, and Stryker in developing marketing strategies.

A graduate of India’s Doon School, Debu majored in Economics at Muskingum. 

The Commencement ceremony will air live on Orbit TV and WMCO Radio. To listen or view the ceremony, go to https://www.orbitmediaonline.com.

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