Knowledge@Wharton

For Wharton, using technology in the educational process is a given, says Wharton's new dean, Patrick T. Harker. What's not so clear, Harker says, is how Wharton can best blend technological and traditional educational tools to create what he calls "a community of learning."

Harker, 41, is already immersed in a search for answers.

On February 8, he was named Wharton's 12th dean after a lengthy search during which more than 200 candidates were considered. A faculty member for 15 years, Harker has held numerous leadership positions at Penn, including serving as interim dean and deputy dean since last summer. In these capacities, Harker oversaw development of the MBA program's e-commerce major and expanded the school's distance learning initiatives.

He joined the Wharton faculty in 1984, was named UPS Transportation Professor for the Private Sector in 1991, and served as chairperson of the Operations and Information Management Department from 1997 to 1999. Harker earned both bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from Penn in 1981, then received a master's degree in economics and a PhD in civil engineering, also from Penn, in 1983.

Harker, who played defensive tackle for the Penn Quakers, says that as a college student he assumed he would simply become an engineer. But on a whim, he took a transportation course that changed his perspective entirely: for the first time, he saw and was intrigued by social ramifications of technology. Similarly, as a scholar, his research has probed the social and economic issues facing the service sector. Today, as an administrator, he continues to scrutinize and evaluate technology's influence - this time on the learning process.

Harker is a resident of Haddon Heights, N.J., where he lives with his wife, Emily - a Wharton alumna who he met at Penn - and their three children. During an interview with the Wharton Alumni Magazine, Harker talked about his vision for the school, the challenges he faces, and the ever-changing world of business.

What will your top priority be as Wharton's 12th dean?

Harker: Our top priority is essentially the same as it’s always been: attracting and retaining the best faculty. We are nothing but people. Yes, we have buildings and technology. But they really aren’t important if we don’t have the intellectual capital to deliver new and exciting content and ideas. Wharton’s intellectual capital – its faculty – have built this school. If you think about the past year, which was a transition year, we’ve not missed a beat and that’s because this faculty refused to go back. Tom Gerrity’s greatest legacy to this school, and (former deans) Russ Palmer and Don Carroll before him, was developing a faculty who are hungry, who want to be the best management faculty in the world, period.

The rest is really tactics. But the key is to get a group of people who want to excel. How do we continue to draw these people? The most important thing is to have an exciting intellectual environment here. And that means great colleagues and great students. For Wharton to stay on top, the school must create opportunities for its faculty to express their ideas and creativity through innovative research and educational programs.

What will your biggest challenge be?

Harker: Our biggest challenge will be going through the process of rethinking learning. This doesn’t have to do with curricula, it’s about all the new forms of learning and ways of teaching and the new opportunities that they present. The world of business schools is opening up pretty dramatically. We are facing competitors from new sources – namely, in the distance learning market. They are going after the business school market, and some, at the high end of the market. We need to prepare for that. We can’t just do what we’ve always done.

No one ever said that teaching in a box – an hour and a half two days a week – is the only way to teach, but that’s largely what we’re doing. We’ve experimented with Wharton Direct and some other things, but we have to accelerate those experiments because the marketplace will not allow us to stick with the old way. We know this because of what is happening among our student population: 25 students did not come back for the second year of their MBA so they could pursue dot-com opportunities. This may be a blip, but it may not. We don’t know. We also had a couple of undergraduates who didn’t come back, also to go off to dot-coms. And we’re seeing our students accelerating their program, with some MBA students finishing in December, taking classes through the summer and getting out. We’ve always had that, but we’re seeing a little more of it. We’re starting to see students behaving differently.