P&Q’s 2026 Best In Class Awards: Northwestern Kellogg, Teaching Quality

A good business school teaches students what they need to know. A great one teaches them how to think when there is no obvious answer. That distinction sits at the center of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and it is exactly why Kellogg is the winner of the Teaching Quality category in this year’s P&Q Best In Class awards.

At Kellogg, the classroom is a place where ideas are tested, challenged, and strengthened, and collaboration is at the heart of the MBA experience.

“Kellogg students learn as much from one another as they do from their professors, and our classrooms are built around discussion, teamwork, and shared problem-solving,” says Jan Van Mieghem, deputy dean at Kellogg.

The approach starts with who stands at the front of the room. Kellogg looks for professors with a talent for bridging rigorous scholarship and the complex, ever-changing challenges businesses face today.

A CLASSROOM BUILT ON DEBATE

“Great teaching at Kellogg starts with great research, and we look for faculty who excel at both,” Van Mieghem says. “We seek scholars who are creative, willing to take risks, and eager to pursue new areas of study, and who can translate that work into insights that matter to business leaders.”

Many of those professors have firsthand experience with the problems they teach.

“Many of our faculty also bring deep industry knowledge into the classroom. Students benefit directly from that perspective,” Van Mieghem says.

Teaching senior executives gives faculty another window into what businesses are navigating.

“By regularly teaching senior executives, they hear firsthand about the challenges leaders face,” Van Mieghem says. “That shapes their research and, ultimately, what they bring to MBA students.”

RETHINKING HOW A SUBJECT IS TAUGHT

As generative AI reshapes higher education, Kellogg is actively encouraging professors to rethink how they teach.

“We encourage faculty to experiment, and many of the most engaging classroom experiences at Kellogg come from professors rethinking how a subject is taught,” Van Mieghem says.

Sébastien Martin, an associate professor of operations, is one example. When generative AI arrived and many schools responded with restrictions, Martin saw an opportunity instead. He created Kai, Kellogg’s AI teaching assistant, along with interactive AI homework and AI-driven case studies in which students question the case’s characters directly rather than reading a static document.

Kellogg also launched AI Foundations for Managers in fall 2025, a five-week course taught by faculty across marketing, strategy, operations, finance, accounting, and management and organizations.

“Because AI is changing so quickly, faculty continually revise the course, updating tools, assignments, and case material as new capabilities emerge,” Van Mieghem says. “The range of sections also continues to grow in response to market needs and student interest. The result is a course that reflects the problems managers are working through now, not the ones they faced when the syllabus was first written.”

WHEN THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER

Technology is only one way Kellogg professors are changing how students engage with difficult ideas. In a course called Moral Complexity in Leadership: An Exploration Through Literature, Professor Brooke Vuckovic uses novels, plays, and short stories to help students dig into the ethical gray areas leaders regularly encounter.

“Fiction offers access to characters’ motivations in a way traditional cases often cannot,” Van Mieghem says. “The discussion-based format asks students to form a view, defend it, and stay open to classmates who see things differently.”

In both cases, the aim is the same: students who question and wrestle with ideas rather than simply take notes.

“In both cases the goal is the same: a classroom where students are active participants, not passive listeners,” Van Mieghem says.

TEACHING FOR JUDGMENT

For Kellogg, the point is for students to leave with more than a firm grasp of the material.

“Beyond the material itself, we hope students leave with judgment: the ability to approach an unfamiliar problem, weigh competing perspectives, and make sound decisions under uncertainty,” Van Mieghem says.

Just as important, he adds, is learning to work with all kinds of people.

“We also want them to leave with the habits of a collaborative leader, someone who can draw out the best thinking from a team, disagree constructively, and keep learning long after graduation,” Van Mieghem says.

FULL CIRCLE

The classroom is only one of the places where Kellogg connects students to the business world, pulling faculty, executives, students, and alumni into the same conversations.

“That connection is built into how Kellogg works. We call it Full Circle,” Van Mieghem says. “Faculty who regularly teach executives see emerging business challenges early. Those conversations spark new research, and that research flows into new courses and programs for students. Alumni complete the circle by mentoring students, hiring graduates, and returning to campus to share what they are seeing in their organizations.”

What makes Kellogg’s teaching stand out, in the end, is its ability to keep classrooms current while holding collaboration, debate, experimentation, and judgment at the center.

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