All The New Professors At The Top 25 U.S. B-Schools

Daisy Lovelace is a professor of the practice at Duke University Fuqua School of Business. Duke photo

Daisy Lovelace hates to move. Who doesn’t? Fortunately for the professor of the practice at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, her move this fall was to a school she was familiar with. Lovelace, who spent last year as an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce, was a visiting scholar at Duke Fuqua for the first six months of 2019. She also used to live in Durham, where Duke is located.

But that doesn’t mean moving isn’t a pain, she says.

“If you think through the logistics of moving, I joke that ‘move’ is a four-letter word because it’s just a pain, right? Nobody likes to move,” Lovelace tells P&Q. “In terms of dealing with packing and unpacking and cleaning and organizing and all of those logistics. And then there’s all the other things about closing up shop where you were before, and starting at a new place.”

The pandemic added to the difficulty. For one, it meant Lovelace couldn’t say goodbye to her students in person.

“It was hard to not be able to see my students before leaving,” she says. “There’s this lack of closure, not being able to participate in a formal graduation or even just see students that I was close with before transitioning. And so that left some challenges.”

Lovelace, who taught MBA, EMBA, and undergrad courses for six years at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business prior to joining McIntire, is teaching a pair of leadership electives and a doctoral seminar on academic communication this fall at Duke Fuqua. Her husband, Tim Lovelace, is a member of the faculty at Duke School of Law.

Daisy Lovelace says her courses are expected to be taught mostly virtually this year, though when she spoke with P&Q in August the details were still being worked out. She’s well-acquainted with remote instruction, having taught for years through LinkedIn Learning.

It’s “full steam ahead,” she says. “I find that my colleagues across the board have been incredibly welcoming and generous with their time in terms of just kind of walking me through what a typical year would be like, helping me get settled in — in that way.”