The Best MBA Faculty: Yale SOM & Virginia Darden

Yale SOM Classroom

Alas, this process is a mirror image of what happens on the faculty side, says Venkataraman. “Each faculty member masters the details of the case on their own and develops their teaching approach. Then the faculty gets together in their teaching teams. The five members discuss how they are going to teach the case to other cases in the past, how it relates to the structure of the overall course, and what they expect students to learn. Then, they finalize a teaching plan and a set of questions for how they’d like the conversation to flow…After teaching the class, professors have an introspection, where they share their experiences, evaluate what went well and what didn’t, and what weren’t they weren’t able to cover and how they could make that up. You have a debrief on those kinds of things. The faculty member has at least an hour of preparation and another hour of teaching team preparation before going into the classroom.”

SEEKING ANSWERS TO CERTAIN QUESTIONS

Darden is demanding when it comes to teaching and student development. That’s exactly what leads faculty candidates to Charlottesville. “When they come here, they are interested in teaching as a profession,” notes Venkataraman. “It is important to their own aspiration, their definition and identity as a scholar.”

Darden students holding discussions after class

How does Darden select new faculty members? It involves an intensive process that includes the usual tours, interviews, and dinners, where they meet with search committee members, senior professors, and every faculty member in their area of expertise. “By the time we’re done, we will have touched them in so many ways,” shares Venkataraman. We’ll get a fairly good sense for where they are with several questions that are important to us.”

Those questions, according to Venkataraman, cover areas like these:

1) Is this person genuinely interested in developing students?

2) Is this person’s research relevant to practice? Are the questions they’re asking and approaches they’re proposing “narrow, technical, and abstract” – or something that addresses a real problem?

3) Are they interested in developing elective courses around their areas of expertise?

4) Can they communicate their expertise beyond a group of scholars? Do they possess a presence that would engage a classroom audience?

5) How do they display curiosity in their research and interactions with others?

6) Do they possess an ability that would enable them to someday help others develop their teaching?

7) How willing are they to translate their expertise to cases and materials for their students?

In addition, Venkataraman will bring teaching candidates to class to see how much it energizes them. “These discussions aren’t abstract or based on a set of assumptions about what it takes to teach here. It is more trying to get them first-hand experience with our community.”

WANT TEACHERS, NOT ENTERTAINERS

Back in New Haven, Edi Pinker isn’t holding an audition “for the next George Clooney.” He concedes that being charismatic is a plus for new faculty member. However, entertainment value fades quickly for substance-minded Yale SOM MBAs.

Yale SOM’s Evans Hall is designed so faculty and students must walk along the same pathways.

“We want people who will be able to communicate clearly in an organized way with material that has been carefully curated to maximize value to the student and the class,” Pinker explains. “If a potential faculty member has poor communication skills, it will hurt their chances. It won’t hurt them if they are not super witty.”

That may sound counterintuitive in an age where marketers pay homage to the “classroom experience.” Over Pinker’s 20-year academic career, he has read many student course evaluations. In the end, the highest-scoring professors amassed accolades for two things: content and effort. “If they see the instructor cares about their learning, they don’t care how entertaining they are,” Pinker divulges.

“They may say, ‘He was dry and could’ve made it more interesting,’ but they’ll also say that they really learned a lot.”

TWO DIFFERING STYLES…SAME GREAT RESULTS

Which faculty members stand out at Yale SOM? It is a question fraught with the potential for bruised egos. That’s why Pinker is careful to hedge his two choices, noting they were picked for their contrasting styles as much as their pedagogical mastery and classroom prowess.

The first professor he touts is Amy Wrzesniewski, who teaches courses on teamwork that are activity-driven. Notably, she developed a course called Global Virtual Teams, where students complete assignments by working in remote teams with peers from other universities. For a lecturer like Pinker, Wrzesniewski’s command of a bustling classroom is stunning.

Yale SOM’s Amy Wrzesniewski

“Delivering courses like that requires very careful attention to the process of how class is run and how the teaching is done,” he observes. “That attention to what a student will get out of every exercise and how they fit together – the care and attention that she puts into that – is above-and-beyond what most faculty do when they teach the course. In a subject like that, which deals with how people interact, the process is a big part of the content. You need to bring people along as a group through certain stages of the learning process. She is a star at that.”

In contrast, Tobias Moskowitz teaches more technical courses in structured finance. Unlike Wrzesniewski, who takes her classes on a journey, Moskowitz applies a more standard lecture delivery. Despite this, students also heap praise on his courses.

“He is such a strong researcher and possesses such a strong knowledge of practice in finance and asset management and delivers things so clearly at such a high level that the students really feel they are getting the top-of-the-top knowledge in the field.”

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