2019 Best 40 Under 40 Professors: Juliana Schroeder, University of California-Berkeley (Haas)

Juliana Schroeder

Assistant Professor of Management of Organizations

University of California- Berkeley Haas School of Business

From handshakes and small talk, Juliana Schroeder is dedicated to the study of social judgements, decisions, and psychological processes. Perhaps it’s exactly how outstanding she is at understanding people that’s helped garner nearly 80 different nominations for this year’s best 40 under 40 professors list.

“Juliana is a professor students remember,” one nominator said. “She learns our names, engages with us personally, and teaches in a way that makes us eager to know more about research in the field. She is knowledgable, approachable, and a strong presence in the classroom.”

Said another: “Juliana is an outstanding negotiations professor. She expertly used humor and would take time to speak one-on-one with students who arrived early before every class. One of my highlights from class was a mock press party for a sports agent case. Juliana supplied food and beverages to facilitate group negotiations. Juliana is one of the best professors I’ve had, and it’s an honor to nominate her.”

Schroeder is the winner of The International Social Cognition Network’s 2018 Early Career Award and has been named 2018 Schwabacher Fellow, the “highest honor bestowed by Haas on assistant professors.” With an MBA from Chicago’s Booth School of Business and her Ph.D. in Psychology and Business also from the University of Chicago, Schroeder has won almost 30 honors and awards in the last decade, and has had her research published in outlets including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and Journal of Experimental Psychology. In spite of her academic endeavors, which include 385 Google citations and 11 manuscripts which are currently under review, there is no dispute over how highly the students at Haas think of her. Schroeder is the 2018 recipient of the Excellence in Teaching in Full-time MBA program Cheit Award that is awarded annually by Haas students.

Current Age: 32

At current institution since what year? 2015

Education: Ph.D. Psychology & Business (Chicago Booth), MBA (Chicago Booth), MA Psychology & Statistics (University of Chicago), BA Psychology & Economics (University of Virginia)

List of current MBA courses you currently teach: Negotiation and Conflict Resolution

TELL US ABOUT YOUR LIFE AS A PROFESSOR:

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when… I accidentally stumbled into the field of organizational behavior when applying to decision science Ph.D. programs. I wanted to conduct social psychology research with Drs. Nicholas Epley, Ayelet Fishbach, and Jane Risen at the University of Chicago and the only way to do it was through a joint Ph.D. program in business and psychology. I would never have considered doing a Ph.D. at a business school before that moment.

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it?

One thing I study is how different ways of structuring communication—such as the medium by which a message is expressed (e.g., video, audio message, written statement)—can influence assessments of a communicator’s mental capacities (e.g., how intelligent the communicator seems). I’ve been conducting experiments on this topic since graduate school (Schroeder & Epley, 2015, 2016; Schroeder, Kardas, & Epley, 2017). An interesting result is that communicators appear more mentally capable (e.g., smarter) when their opinions are heard than when the same opinion is read. Anyone who has ever read their own transcribed speech can understand this result – it is a uniquely humbling experience!

If I weren’t a business school professor… I’ve been conducting research since I was 14 so it’s hard to imagine a world in which I wasn’t a researcher of some type. In high school, I thought I wanted to be a chemist because it was the only topic that challenged me. I also read and write a lot of fiction so possibly I could have become a (mediocre) fiction writer.

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor?

I really care about my students and I try to get to know each one of them. Since I teach negotiations, I try to understand how each student’s negotiation skills fit into the broader context of his or her personality and life. I stay in touch with a lot of my students and continue to coach them as they recruit for post-MBA jobs.

One word that describes my first-time teaching: Hopeful

Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor: It’s the world’s best job.

Professor you most admire and why:

Too hard to pick just one professor who is a great teacher. Coming from Chicago Booth, I admired Nicholas Epley’s unbelievable energy and stamina in the classroom, Linda Ginzel’s ability to connect deeply with her students, George Wu and Bernd Wittenbrink’s more mathematically and game-theoretically sophisticated styles of teaching negotiations. At Haas, the legendary Holly Schroth was my teaching mentor and helped me develop my negotiations class. I have learned a lot from my wonderful and talented Haas colleagues who are all excellent professors (e.g., Jenny Chatman, Laura Kray, Cameron Anderson, Don Moore, and Dana Carney).

STUDENTS:

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students?

They bring such interesting life experiences into the classroom. Haas students are particularly amazing because they are hand-selected to fit with the Haas culture (4 defining principles: beyond yourself, student always, confidence without attitude, and question the status quo). So they tend to be intellectually curious and engaged. One student from my class this year made a company called “81cents” (81cents.com) to help women become better negotiators.

What is most challenging?

Moderating a 1-hour class discussion with 74 students so that each of them has the opportunity to describe their negotiation experience and get personalized feedback – very challenging.

Using just one word, describe your favorite type of student: Engaged

Using just one word, describe your least favorite type of student: Disengaged

When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as… Intense. I used to write a paragraph of feedback for each response paper that they submitted – I try to give extremely detailed feedback on everything they do.

LIFE OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM:

What are your hobbies? I don’t do anything interesting but my husband flies planes for fun so sometimes I tag along.

How will you spend your summer? Doing research, probably

Favorite place(s) to vacation: Italy (even though it sounds cliché – I minored in Italian language and literature in college so I try to get back there when I can).

Favorite book(s): I should probably list research books but my very favorite are fiction novels: Atonement, The God of Small Things, The Little Prince, The Book Thief, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. For fun: Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Ann Patchett. Classics: Ernest Hemingway, Louisa May Alcott, Victor Hugo. These books/authors are stylistically diverse but all great in their own ways.

What is your favorite movie and/or television show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much? I don’t watch much… but movies in the genre of Memento, Inception, the Matrix, etc. are kind of fun.

Favorite type of music and/or favorite artist: I’ll listen to almost any kind of music from country (I’m from Virginia) to pop to hip hop.

THOUGHTS OF REFLECTIONS:

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this… Technology facilitated interaction – I’m envisioning discussions in which people can interact and engage more with the professor at all times.

In your opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at doing what?

Humanizing employees & staff. I’m working on a paper with Peter Belmi (UVA) and we find that people tend to feel more dehumanized in workplace (vs. non-workplace) situations – they feel like their voices are not heard, that they are interchangeable with others, that they have less agency, etc. It seems like workplaces with more calculative norms (like those that make cost/benefit trade-offs for interacting with people more salient) create more of this feeling of dehumanization. I think it is important for people to feel valued in the workplace and think their work is meaningful.

Faculty and administrators say:

“Juliana excels in helping students feel competent and confident in material that was once intimidating and inaccessible. In a survey from the beginning of the course, only 13% of students called negotiations “low stress”, while more than a third called ‘gaining confidence’ their explicit goal from the course. Juliana addressed this by providing frequent, fair and personalized feedback. For example, when I noticed that her comments on each student’s first paper were more robust than any feedback I had received while at Haas, she explained, “students worked hard on these… I owe it to them to provide good feedback so that they can improve.” A common theme across student feedback was that taking Negotiations & Conflict Resolution with Juliana was a highlight from their time at Haas and a source of personal and professional growth. I share this sentiment: learning from Juliana and supporting the feedback-rich environment she created has been a highlight of my own experience as an MBA at Haas. For her mentorship of 125 of my peers, and of me, Juliana has demonstrated herself deserving of this award.”

“I took Juliana’s “Negotiations and Conflict Resolutions” course in Fall of 2018. Professor Schroeder was tremendous in leading the course. The course was well-organized and led to significant learning. But you can say that for many courses at Haas. What sets Juliana apart for me was her commitment to her students’ lifelong learning and well-being. After a class discussion where I had shared my poor sentiment regarding my own outcome in a simulated negotiation, Juliana reached out to me after class and asked how I was doing and gave me strategies for how to approach that in the future. I’ve heard stories of classmates reaching out to her with help on their own job negotiations. Even alumni reach out to her and ask for help, something she welcomes. Juliana really embodies the Beyond Yourself principle here at Haas, and represents the best of Haas.”

“Juliana Schroeder is an assistant professor in the Management of Organizations group at the Haas School of Business. She teaches the extremely popular elective “Negotiations and Conflict Resolution,” for which she won the highly prestigious Cheit Award for Teaching Excellence in the Full-time MBA program in 2018. This award is only given to one Haas professor a year, and exceptionally, Juliana won it in only the second term she taught the course. Juliana is also a prolific researcher and rising star in social psychology (she was recently honored by the Association for Psychological Science for her exceptional promise). She studies how we make sense of other people’s minds, how we empathize with or dehumanize people, and how different communication mediums influence this process. Students give high praise to Juliana’s ability to bring her research expertise to the classroom. Over and over again in teaching evaluations, students describe Juliana as passionate, accessible, incredibly organized, and inclusive of students with diverse backgrounds (international students and minority students) and different personality types (extroverts as well as introverts). More than a few describe the course among their favorites at Berkeley Haas.”

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