Spreadsheet One
*Classrooms Get High-Tech Upgrade
*E-Tail Optimist
*Back So Soon? You Bet They Are!
*Take That, You Sloans
*Europeans Honor Øvlisen
*New Ventures

Spreadsheet Three

Responding Quickly, Getting It Right

Illustration by Harry Campbell

AN EARTHQUAKE HITS AND hospitals need blood. A 15-year-old opens fire in a classroom. A teenage basketball player collapses during practice.

These crisis situations require moving information to emergency personnel fast, but what’s the best way to deliver it? That was the problem presented to 25 Stanford business and engineering students in a class designed to develop their ability to construct electronic business processes.

The class, E-Business Process Foundry, was conceived by Sian Tan, a GSB lecturer who is a vice president of ATC2, a technology company creator based in Munich. The course was taught by Tan, Armando Fox of the engineering school, and the GSB’s Jim Patell.

Over 10 weeks, four student teams created Internet- or intranet-based crisis-response systems for the Stanford Blood Bank to respond to an emergency need, for high school coaches to deal with student injuries at away games, for police to use school maps and photos when responding to a school crisis, and for a business to contact customers after an invasion of its private customer information database.

The students’ prototypes were presented in a special session in March. “I’m very pleased,” said Patell. “Students now know what it takes to make a working process that responds to real users’ needs. It’s one thing to write code that looks good and quite another to design and execute a process that works simply and reliably.”

The Return of McKern

THE SLOAN PROGRAM SAID hello to one old friend and goodbye to another as the directorship changed hands. Bruce McKern, former visiting professor of international business and director of executive education, took over as director of the Sloan Program at the start of August, while ethicist Kirk Hanson, MBA ’71, a senior lecturer for many years and Sloan director for the past five years, became Emeritus and moved down El Camino Real to head the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Before his 1989–93 visit to Stanford, McKern was founding dean and professor at Australia’s Macquarie Graduate School of Management. From 1993 to 1996, he was professor of international business at Carnegie Mellon and president of the Carnegie Bosch Institute, a think tank devoted to research and executive education in international business. Back in Australia, McKern served as president of that country’s oldest business school, Mt. Eliza.

McKern will teach as well as direct the annual program for 48 middle managers.

View from the Top of the Public Sector

BRAD STROH VOLUNTEERED as a Big Brother in Chicago, Ed Holder fixed houses with Habitat for Humanity in California, and Jason Gastwirth helped train welfare recipients for jobs in New York. Now all three members of the MBA Class of 2002 are viewing public service from a different perch— as nonvoting members of the boards of directors of nonprofit organizations. “You are one step removed from the individuals you are helping,” says Stroh, “but in this role, you touch thousands.”

Stroh is helping a consortium of youth programs develop metrics to gauge its success. Holder helps another group develop computer training for the homeless and other library patrons. Gastwirth helps two merging environmental organizations develop cash flow projections and financial processes. All three say they plan careers in the for-profit sector but see nonprofit board service as an ongoing activity. “Age diversity is something I think many boards could benefit from,” says Holder.

Created by students in the GSB’s Public Management Program in 1998, the Board Fellows Program is run by PMP students who match applicants with organizations, says April Chou, MBA ’01, one of the student leaders who this past year matched 50 new fellows with boards who had mentors for them and specific needs.

Added new leader Laura Loker, MBA ’02: “Especially where student interests are well matched with specific boards, there is a great opportunity to learn more about programmatic challenges, policy implications, and public perceptions of various organizations.”

Some of the projects are “really tough,” says Andrew Fenselau, MBA ’99, who became a voting board member of an environmental organization as a result of his Board Fellows experience. “I still have a lot to learn about how to value social returns on investment.”

Students Cheer Top Teachers

BUSINESS SCHOOL STUDENTS recently honored Ming Huang, PhD ’96 and an assistant professor of finance since 1998, with the School’s 19th annual Distinguished Teaching Award. Meanwhile, the Business School PhD Student Association chose economics professor Robert Wilson to receive its third annual Faculty Distinguished Service Award, and the Sloan Class of 2001 selected Ron Kasznik, associate professor of accounting, for its annual teaching honors.

Huang, dubbed “the Yoda of Stanford Business School” by one nominator, received a standing ovation from the 200-plus students, faculty, and staff who came to the May award ceremony. He makes finance “interesting and digestible to a complete neophyte in a non-threatening, nonpatronizing way,” said one student. Another, an engineer now planning a career in finance, credited Huang with changing her life by changing her way of thinking. This year’s award was based on 106 nominations from students throughout the School.

Doctoral students presented Wilson with telegrams and prerecorded messages from former advisees grateful for his guidance. “A department that consisted of all of Bob’s advisees, and no one else, would easily be one of the 10 best economics departments in the world,” said one student nominator.

Kasznik finished first in three of five teaching categories upon which Sloans evaluate their core teachers and a close second in the other two. On top of that, said Sloan class president Mike Cardarelli, “he still has a good haircut.”