P&Q’s 2019 Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors

This year’s list includes 16 women — more than any previous year. One of them, Juliana Schroeder, an assistant professor of management and organizations at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, received one of highest marks for both research and teaching. The 32-year-old received her MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and began teaching at Berkeley Haas in 2015; she has quickly become a crowd favorite among full-time MBAs at Haas. Schroeder won the Excellence in Teaching in Full-time MBA Program Cheit Award in 2018, which is awarded annually by Haas students. She was also named the 2018 Schwabacher Fellow, which is the “highest honor bestowed by Haas on assistant professors,” according to the school.

“I really care about my students and I try to get to know each one of them,” says Schroeder, who also tells us she has been conducting research since the age of 14. “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.”

Her nominators agreed.

“Juliana is a professor students remember,” one wrote. “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.”

TOP PROFESSORS THAT MAKE DRY SUBJECTS EXCITING AND GO BEYOND CLASSROOM BASICS TO MENTORSHIP AND COACHING

Sometimes being an impactful professor comes from simply making a dry subject exciting and engaging. We had a handful of accounting professors make this year’s list for doing just that. One of those is 39-year-old Devin Shanthikumar, an associate professor of accounting at the University of California-Irvine’s Merage School of Business. Shanthikumar received about 80 separate nominations, many of which praised her engaging and exciting teaching style.

Shanthikumar also had more than 80 glowing nominations from colleagues, alumni, and current students. “Surveyed by our MBA students Devin consistently shows her teaching is student-oriented and she leaves an impact with students by serving as a coach of sorts, offering one-on-one meetings,” Kristin Dalton, the admissions coordinator for the MBA programs at the Merage School said in her nomination of Shanthikumar. “She has an innovative, real-world application that pushes students to develop as future leaders expanding their critical thinking and leadership skills for this digitally driven world. She is a strong researcher with publications in the highest quality scholarly journals.”

Said another nominator: “Professor Shantikumar has an exceptional gift for engaging students in what is often considered a dry medium. Cost accounting has never had such a great advocate, but her discussions of ethics, business dynamics, and organizational propel the educational experience to new heights. She makes your effort feel worth it and rewards your hard work with investigative conversation and thoughtful contrarianism. Her effectiveness as an instructor is underscored by the respect she commands in a room. I chose my business school because of her five-minute pitch and taking her class justified my decision.”

For her closest family, her passion for teaching likely comes as no surprise, considering Shanthikumar says she had her sights set on being a professor since she was five.

“I loved teaching my younger brother and even asked my parents for a white-board for Christmas when I was four,” Shanthikumar recalls. “It took me longer to figure out that I wanted to be a business school professor. Ultimately, I realized that business combined all of the topics I was most interested in – math, psychology, economics, law, and more.”

RESEARCH PROWESS A CONSTANT AMONG TOP PROFESSORS

Roman Sheremeta, an assistant professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, also scored highest among all 188 professors nominated this year, particularly in the category of research. Sheremeta, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management, has been cited by other researchers across the world more than 3,500 times. The 36-year-old’s research has appeared in NBC News, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal among others. According to Manoj Malhotra, dean of the Weatherhead School, Sheremeta has done this while also maintaining top marks in his student evaluations.

“Roman’s MBA course, Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, which he’s taught from 2013 to 2019, has consistently received one of the highest teaching evaluations at the Weatherhead School of Management (an average of 4.9 out of 5),” Malhotra said in his nomination of Sheremeta. “This is one example of consistently strong teaching evaluations for his courses. Roman has an extensive body of research, with greater than 60 academic articles in leading journals of economics, management, and political science.”

Among his more than 70 nominations, students also praised his ability to make economics fun and engaging. “Dr. Roman was one of the few professors that I think truly understood how to show his love for economics and pass it on to his students,” one nominator said. “If I ever had the opportunity to take one of his classes again I would do so in a heartbeat.” Said another: “Roman was one of the — if not the — top professors I had during my MBA program. He challenged us and taught us in a hands-on fashion the ins and outs of negotiation and conflict resolution. It was a fascinating, fast-paced course in which I learned an incredible amount. I’ve also been interested in his research and other accomplishments, in myriad areas of economics but especially as it relates to conflict resolution and game theory. Plus, his recent awards and regular media placement are a testament to how well he can research, understand and, perhaps most importantly as a professor, explain complex issues.”

Lindred (Lindy) Greer, who has taught at Stanford’s GSB had nearly 5,000 Google Scholar citations, and as one nominator put it, is one of the prominent faces of the GSB. “Lindy will be one of the first people you will see on Stanford GSB’s website, TV interviews, and marketing materials,” one second-year MBA who nominated Greer said. “She will also be one of the first people you see when you google for world’s rising researchers on small group and teams psychology.”

Another glowing nomination said: “I took Professor Lindred Greer’s course The Psychology of Start-Up Teams in the Spring quarter of my first year at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and found it to be the most valuable course that I took while at the GSB. This is a bold statement, there are great classes at the GSB, but I stand behind it because it has been the most unforgettable class for me. It’s been almost a year since I took the class, and I still put into practice what I learned, daily. It is rare to have a class that talks practically about the high-level thinking of setting a purpose and a vision, as well as the nitty-gritty details of types of decision-making and which ones are red-flags. Yet, when building or joining a growing company, it is both the high level and the details that make or break it. Her research is not only innovative, it’s extremely useful.”