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Alan Kaye, Dean’s Advisory Board Member at The Paul Merage School of Business, has endowed a new scholarship—the MBA Student Award in Support of Human Resources Development. This award will support an MBA student interested in studying and working in the field of HR. Kaye served as chief human relations officer at several LA-based Fortune 400 companies, most recently Mattel, Inc.

 Kaye has served as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board since the mid 90’s and has been featured as a guest speaker for the Merage School MBA and Executive Education programs for the last 12 years. Once a year, all new MBA students gather for Kaye’s lecture on company culture, and he returns to present on various topics up to four times a year.

“I’ve gotten to know a lot of the faculty and the staff at the Merage School through my long-term involvement,” said Kaye. “And what always impresses me is that students come first.”

“Faculty and staff can get very busy of course, but no matter what, they put students first and I love that about the people I meet there,” he said.

Kaye’s membership in the DAB first centered around his recruitment efforts, wanting to find “the best and the brightest students” interested in working in Los Angeles. As a resident of Newport Beach, UCI was the answer. Soon this morphed into a closer relationship, and Kaye began sharing his expertise with the Merage School.

“Alan has served as a valuable resource to the Merage School in every dimension from the recruitment of our Deans, to the recruitment of our graduates into the workforce,” says Dean Spangenberg.

“Thus, this endowment is the most recent investment in a long history of giving back to our school,” he continued. “His thoughtful outlook on how we interact with each other in industry has helped guide and shape the way I view our leadership board, the DAB, and my own leadership team. With this gift, Alan truly matches his passion with his philanthropy, and we could not be more grateful.”

Kaye recognizes that the field of HR is ever-changing—especially in the face of artificial intelligence.

“The HR function is becoming very high tech losing some of its high touch and I think there is room and need for both,” he argued. “The world is moving digitally, and I want to support young professionals in helping them use data in a strategic way.”