Leadership Spotlight

Just as Wharton professors value their relationships with other faculty, they jump at the chance to teach the best and brightest business students in the world.

"Wharton is a magnet for interesting people," says Donaldson. "Our students defy the image of a male with a calculator tied to his belt and his eyes straight ahead, fixed on making a billion as quickly as possible. Instead, they are diverse, well-rounded, and ethically interested. They are individuals with an intellectual eagerness and brilliant flashes of insight."

Wharton has never embraced the model of business education in which an untouchable professor holds court in front of a class of subservient students. Instead, Wharton students and professors collaborate inside the classroom and out, with some incredible results. "My students have drawn my attention to topics I would not otherwise have thought about," says Mike Useem. "It's a two-way exchange. While I am teaching, I am also learning."

A good example, Useem says, is a recent experience in his Leadership Teamwork course.

"There were several veterans of military service in the class," he remembers. "We got to talking about how leadership works in the military, and we were so interested in the topic that soon afterwards we jumped in the car and headed to West Point for the day. We talked to people there about how they develop leadership." The impromptu team followed up with similar road trips to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and the Marine Corps. Their findings led to a program in which students experienced leadership training, Marine style.

For Olivia Mitchell, International Foundation of Employment Benefit Plans Professor and Professor of Insurance and Risk Management, interaction with her students may have influenced the development of an entire country. "Manish Sabharwal, WG'96, took my course on pensions," she recalls. "He took careful and copious notes, then e-mailed them to friends in India who were starting a pension system."

Sometimes student-faculty collaborations can be quite high profile, says Siegel, "My book, Stocks for the Long Run, could not have been written without my students' research assistance," he explains. "They also helped dramatically with the construction of my website. And these are mostly undergraduates! One undergrad, Sean Smith, had an incredible ability to collate and process material. He was invaluable."

Siegel is also impressed with Wharton students' capacity for old-fashioned hard work: "At the end of my classes, I send an e-mail to students asking for TA applicants. I get 40 to 50 applicants every time! It's a lot of work, and the pay is not great, but I still get such a positive response."