Skip to Content

About the GSB

 

From the Dean

2006 State of the School

Dear Friends,

The last year has been a very meaningful one for the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I hope it has been so for you, both professionally and personally. At Stanford, and especially within the Business School, tremendous momentum has been building. Not in 45 years—since Ernie Arbuckle, the dean who oversaw my MBA experience—have we had such dramatic changes in our vision for management education. These changes are at once important and forward looking. In a June story on our announcement of a new curriculum, Business Week called it “a clue to what the future of management education might look like.”

After four months of study under the leadership of Professor Garth Saloner, the faculty adopted a new educational model in late May. It does not tweak at the margins; it is the most complete retooling of the curriculum in decades. The objective: to create a more personal, more intellectually engaging, and more global MBA education to carry the School and its students into the 21st century. To achieve this, the new model builds on the enormous advantage of our strategically small size and creates an important new faculty-student advising component. It will be a significant factor in Stanford’s ability to differentiate itself from other top programs.

New Curriculum

The new curriculum ensures that all students are engaged in their learning in the most effective way.

A Critical Analytical Thinking course of 20 or fewer students per section will allow students to work closely with a faculty member who will help them plot the rest of their academic program. The course also will help students understand issues that cut across general management and how their other courses fit together. It will be one of eight general management perspectives courses in the first year. A strategic leadership course will encourage students to begin thinking early about their own leadership style and skills. Expanded global content and a global context course will be a hallmark of the new curriculum. MBA students will be required to participate in an international experience during their two years—an internship, study trip, student exchange, or service learning trip. This is an important step. The faculty and I have listened carefully to alumni who are operating in an intensely competitive and interconnected global environment.

We work hard at recruiting a diverse student body—in the broadest possible sense. They are diverse by background and experience, not by ability. Some have six years on Wall Street; others have spent two years in AmeriCorps. Others are military officers, marketing specialists, or operations managers. Following the general management perspectives courses, students will take 11 general management foundation courses. There will be a base-level course in each required subject, which is essentially the course we have now, but those with more experience and preparation in a particular area will take a more challenging version.

The School’s new curriculum, to be put in place for the 2007 entering class, is just one of the changes creating momentum at the Business School and Stanford University. In June, Stanford trustees approved site plans for a new state-of-the-art Business School campus. In August, the School announced that Nike Chairman Philip H. Knight, MBA ’62, will give $105 million—the largest gift ever to a business school—to help build the new campus and fund faculty. In July, the School also completed its first four-week Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship for nonbusiness graduate students.

New Collaborations

Stanford University President John Hennessy has spoken of the Business School’s role as “how to get things done through the management of people and resources.” A course in Biodesign Innovation is one such example.

This past year, faculty and students from engineering, medicine, and business worked together to develop devices such as a surgical intubation tube that allows a patient to speak. Physicians outline the clinical need, engineers design and prototype the device, and business students figure out how to make it economically viable in the patient care marketplace—and they do this together as an expert team.

We envision more collaboration in the future. The Business School’s Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship for nonbusiness graduate students was a success and enrollment will double next year. Seventy students,including 7 from earth sciences, 14 from medicine, 37 from engineering, 9 from humanities and sciences, and 3 from outside Stanford, attended the four-week program. A typical day had three or four one-hour classes. Subjects covered economics, finance, accounting, operations, teams, negotiations, strategy, marketing, entrepreneurship, growth, and design. There also were sessions on presentation skills and venture formation. The aim is to give nonbusiness graduate students an understanding of general management and entrepreneurship to help them envision how their work might be transferred to the market, where it can meet crucial needs.

New Campus

Looking ahead, one key point of implementation will be the new $275 million campus—to be known as the Knight Management Center. It is expected to include eight buildings around three quadrangles that will provide flexible space for varied class sizes. It will be built across the street from the Schwab Residential Center. With groundbreaking planned for 2008, it will replace our three existing buildings, the oldest of which was dedicated in 1966. The University eventually will allocate the old location to other uses.

Plans also call for a library, a 450-seat auditorium, dining areas, faculty and staff offices, and a parking structure. The facilities will be equipped with state-of-the-art instructional technology and cover some 80,000 square feet more than the existing campus.

Rising to the Challenge

All this coincides with Stanford University’s October 10 launch of The Stanford Challenge, the most ambitious fundraising campaign in its history. Focused on graduate education, multidisciplinary work to address real world problems, the arts, and undergraduate education, the campaign will total $4.3 billion. President Hennessy has outlined plans aimed both at seeking solutions for society’s most formidable challenges and at educating leaders for the complexities they will face in tackling such challenges.

These initiatives—centered on problems including human health, the environment, and international development—all rely on extraordinary levels of partnership in research and teaching spanning Stanford’s seven schools. As an integral part of The Stanford Challenge, the Business School’s $500 million fundraising effort will support curricular innovations, student financial aid, faculty, new buildings, and cross-campus collaborations to support this integrated vision for Stanford.

In addition to the gift from Phil Knight, last fall the School received a $30 million commitment from Anne T. and Robert M. Bass, MBA ’74, that provides generous matching funds to encourage alumni to give to the School and supports, in part, Bass Seminars. These are electives, some of them multidisciplinary, that enable about 30 students, instead of the usual 60 or 70, to work closely with a faculty member to explore and research management topics.

We are not focused solely on large gifts to meet the Business School’s needs. Indeed, unrestricted annual giving has provided the School the capital to seed new programs and multidisciplinary courses. We want every alumnus/a of the School to know that he or she will play a critical role in this campaign. Since 1999, alumni annual giving has increased from 30 percent to 44 percent. I would like to see alumni participation—at any level— top 50 percent. The future of the School is important to all of us who have been its beneficiaries.

Nearly 200 of you have responded to email announcements I made earlier this year about some of these new developments. They have been overwhelmingly positive, and I thank you for the encouragement. Like those of you who emailed, generous alumni have demonstrated early their belief in what we are trying to accomplish.

I hope you are as excited as I am about where these innovations will take us, and that you will play a role in achieving this transformation. Please consider making an investment in the Stanford Graduate School of Business that is meaningful to you. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for all of us to help reshape management education to address the demands that will be placed upon tomorrow’s leaders and organizations.

Sincerely,

Robert Joss
Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean
Sloan '66, MBA '67, PhD '70

If you would like to share your thoughts, email me at joss_robert@gsb.stanford.edu

If you would like to tap into the ideas and activities at the Business School, go to https://alumni.gsb.stanford.edu/lifelonglearning/