Berkeley Haas Dean: We’ve Doubled Scholarships, Made The School More Inclusive

In an October 30 article in the San Francisco Business Times, UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business Dean Ann Harrison discusses the school’s adaptation to the coronavirus pandemic, among which are attempts to have some classes outdoors.

“The first thing Ann Harrison is going to do once the pandemic lifts,” writes Brian Rinker, “is get a haircut. Sure, local hair salons have started to open, but Harrison isn’t taking any unnecessary risks. She owes it to the university and her students. Harrison was only appointed dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last year, but her heart ‘bleeds blue and gold.’ After all, it’s where Harrison fell in love with economics as an undergraduate. She went on to get her doctorate from Princeton University and then worked in academia and as an economist at the World Bank.

“Throughout her career, Harrison has specialized on international trade and inclusion, essentially how exporting and importing goods can negatively impact groups of people. As dean, Harrison was working on long-term plans to make Haas the most entrepreneurial, inclusive and sustainable business school in the world. Then Covid-19 hit.”

Asked to sum up her first year as dean, Harrison says, “we made a lot of progress on a lot of different fronts. We created a more inclusive school that is more representative of the state, doubled scholarships and quadrupled the percentage of underrepresented minorities in our MBA program. We hired a chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer and were developing more joint degree programs across Berkeley. Then in March, we had to completely pivot and worry much more about the short term. We went from being a school that’s all in-person instruction to being a school that’s all remote instruction for all six of our degree programs in 48 hours. That was a really radical transformation.”

Michigan Ross professors win Academy of Management awards

Four members of the management and organizations faculty at the Ross School of Business have earned prestigious honors from the Academy of Management, a pre-eminent professional association for business school faculty and practitioners worldwide.

Sue Ashford, the Michael and Susan Jandernoa Professor of Management and Organizations and chair of Management and Organizations, was named the 2020 recipient of the OAM’s Organizational Behavior Division Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognizes Ashford’s body of research work in the areas of individual proactivity, leadership, job insecurity, and the gig economy.

James P. Walsh was named the 2020 recipient of the Management and Organizational Cognition Division Distinguished Scholar Award. Walsh is an A.F. Thurnau Professor; the Gerald and Esther Carey Professor of Business Administration; professor of Management & Organizations; professor of Strategy; and chair of Strategy.

Lindy Greer, associate Professor for Management and Organizations; Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow; and the faculty director of the Sanger Leadership Center, won the 2020 Organizational Behavior Division Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award.

Jane Dutton, the Robert L. Kahn Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Business Administration and Psychology, received the 2020 OB Division Mentorship Award.

Vanderbilt Master of Science in Finance program marks 15 years

As he neared graduation from college — too late to change his major — John Lewis developed an interest in business and finance. He describes his undergraduate alma mater as having “a fantastic reputation but little brand recognition,” and concluded that he would need an additional credential to land a position in the competitive finance industry.

Since he hadn’t yet launched a career, Lewis ruled out pursuing an MBA; instead, he began exploring other educational options. “I grew up in Dallas and had a lot of friends who went to Vanderbilt,” he says. “Vanderbilt has a lot of recognition.”

Lewis discovered a brand-new offering at the business school at Vanderbilt — a specialized program that could help jump-start a finance career. Once he visited Vanderbilt, he recalls, “I loved the idea of being here with this great finance faculty.” He applied to only one other program — at Oxford — but Vanderbilt, he says, “was just better for a lot of reasons, especially for getting employment in the U.S.”

In the fall of 2005, Lewis officially became a member of Vanderbilt’s inaugural Master of Science in Finance class. The program, in turn, became the first in a series of market-driven, immersion-based programs that began to flower at the school during the latter half of that decade.

Chicago Booth doctoral business program marks centenary

2020 marks the 100^th anniversary of the Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business — the nation’s first doctoral business program.

The preeminent program has trained Nobel Laureates, educated leading researchers around the world, and tackled fundamental questions in economics, accounting, marketing, behavioral science, and more.

Among the program’s milestones:

• The nation’s first doctoral business program was born at the University of Chicago in 1920.
• Since then, 886 Ph.D.s have been awarded.
• Ursula Batchelder Stone, Ph.D. ’29, was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in business from an American university.
• Booth boasts a total of nine Nobel Laureate faculty members, two of whom are alumni of the Ph.D. program: Eugene F. Fama, MBA ’64, Ph.D. ’64 and Myron S. Scholes, MBA ’64, Ph.D. ’70.
• 711 Ph.D. alumni live across the globe
• 398 Ph.D. alumni work in higher education.

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