James C. Bean in 1985. In 2001, Bean was the 7th President of INFORMS, and is a member of the inaugural class of INFORMS Fellows. As a Professor in Industrial and Operations Engineering at Michigan, he rose to become an Associate Dean and co-Director of the Tauber Institute before joining the University of Oregon as business school Dean and then Provost. He became the Provost of Northeastern University in 2013.