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Core redesign offers flexibility
A new MBA core emphasizing integration across courses and having an in-creased focus on managing in today's global environment will be implemented beginning in the fall of 1997. Coordinated focus In terms of academic content, the most noticeable change will occur spring quarter. A series of 10-session courses in information systems, negotiation and conflict management, organizations, and human resources will feature a coordinated focus in three areas: implementation of business strategies, performance, and managing the global enterprise. A new course titled Managing the Global Enterprise is currently being developed as an elective and will be added as a core course sometime after spring of 1998. "Global and international perspectives need to be a part of all core courses, but this new course gives us another opportunity to focus on these issues," said Dean A. Michael Spence in announcing the core changes in January. "We use this approach to integrate both the academic disciplines and the functional knowledge taught during the first year. "The School has long placed value on faculty members' collaboration across traditional academic boundaries," Spence said. "This is going to be especially important as we face the challenge of putting together the new global management course." Throughout the new core, efforts have been made to reinforce integration of course content both by addressing common issues in separate courses taught simultaneously and by putting to use material taught earlier in the year. Fall quarter changes Revisions also call for changes in the content of existing fall quarter courses and more variety in the length of individual courses, a change that opens the door for future development of electives that meet for less than an entire quarter. Adjustments to the core's content and organization have been made on a regular basis. A two-unit core module in information economics was added in the fall of 1996, and the core course in information systems was split into two half-quarter courses -- one dealing with optimization and modeling and the other with strategic aspects of information systems. A core course in human resource management was added in the spring of 1994. In the recent core review, a committee composed of senior faculty mem- bers David Baron, Charles Holloway, and Margaret Neale presented a report last fall outlining four possible outcomes, including no change at all. "Under our agreement, I could choose any one of the four options but could not make modifications within any option," said Spence, who discussed the recommendations with students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae. "Some important issues remain to be resolved, and we will develop the specifics of this program over the next few months," he said. Not all changes may be ready to implement in the 199798 academic year. Spence said he and the School's academic associate deans will work out details, in-cluding the formation of a faculty group to develop the new global enterprise course. A newly created position of faculty director of the core will oversee implementation, coordinating with students, faculty, and the School's administration. The appointment will be for two or three years, allowing the faculty director time to work out an effective program and to fine-tune changes. New core highlights For students, some of the most visible changes in the new core will include:
"We recognize that there is considerable variation among our students in quantitative training," said Spence. In making its recommendations, the review committee called for the core to challenge "the most able and best prepared students. "The level and pace at which material is presented should be consistent with the superior academic qualifications of students." The amount of material presented should demand a full-time student effort, said the committee. It also called for maintaining the tradition of student cooperation by retaining opportunities for them to work in groups or teams as part of the core.  Giving time and talent can be as valuable to a community as the donation of dollars. The Alumni Consulting Team, founded in 1987 by Deborah Cohen Pine, MBA '87, and Alison Elliott, MBA '84, to offer volunteer professional consulting to the public sector, is a case in point. A recent survey funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and conducted by an independent consultant found that 86 percent of ACT projects from 1990 to 1995 met or exceeded client expectations, and that 89 percent of respondents would recommend ACT to other nonprofits. The ACT board is currently working on changes to assure even higher satisfaction rates for future customers -- and also for volunteers. If coming back for more is a sign of satisfaction, ACT already rates high with its volunteers. Alumni/ae who have recently completed five or more ACT projects were recognized at a reception in December. Ed Best, MBA '60; Cynthia Dai, MBA '93; Terry Erisman, MBA '90; Jack Ladd, MBA '65; Richard Marciano, SEP '89; Ron Myers, MBA '66; Jan Pepper, MBA '81; William Pryor, MBA '74; and Jim Toney, MBA '54, have completed five projects. Dave Plough, MBA '86, has taken part in ten, and Bruno Kaiser, MBA '61, who has taken leadership roles in many of the eight projects he has completed, received the 1996 ACT Exceptional Achievement Award. Kaiser has served as ACT's project development coordinator for the past two-and-a-half years. For more information about ACT, contact the organization's director, Erica Richter, MBA '79, at (phone) 650-926-0210 or (e-mail) richter_erica@gsb.stanford.edu. Cathy Castillo |
Milgrom lectures at Nobel seminar
For Stanford economist Paul R. Milgrom, PhD '79, last winter's Nobel prize ceremony had special meaning. He was selected to lecture at a special Nobel seminar in Stockholm December 9 honoring laureate William Vickrey. The seminar was held in lieu of the usual Nobel lecture that would have been delivered by Vickrey. A Columbia University economist, Vickrey died of a heart attack just three days after his 1996 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was announced. The invitation recognized Milgrom's achievements in the application of auction theory, an area pioneered by Vickrey. "He created the field," says Milgrom, who is a professor of economics at the Business School and the Shirley R. and Leonard W. Ely Jr. Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences. "There are lots of his ideas that are still not widely recognized or applied, but they continue to influence me." Milgrom cites Vickrey's notion of combination bidding -- bidding for two items simultaneously rather than one at a time -- as an idea whose time is ripe for application in the public markets. In his Nobel Committee seminar presentation, Milgrom discussed how Vickrey's work inspired the practical application of auction theory, such as Milgrom's model of a "simultaneous ascending bid auction," in which -- in contrast to traditional auctions where pieces are valued and sold independently -- the value of an item can depend on the other items a bidder acquires. Milgrom's research has focused on the study of competitive interaction, game theory, and auctions. He was involved in the design of a new U.S. government auction system for the sale of radio spectrum licenses for wireless technologies in 1994. The principles used in Milgrom's first model for the Federal Communications Commission have had broad application to other government auctions around the world. Milgrom also has served as an auctions consultant to Pacific Telesis as well as to the governments of Mexico, Canada, and Australia. Give or take -- Is philanthropy dead? Is it true that some people are making so much money that they're too busy -- or too selfish -- to give any away? The subject arose last summer with a remark to columnist Maureen Dowd of the New York Times by cable mogul Ted Turner. The Forbes 400 list, and presumably all the other rankings of the super-compensated, "is destroying our country," he told her. If the wealthy 400 need to compete, let them compete in the forum of philanthropy, he suggested. James J. Mitchell, business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, brought the controversy closer to home. Entrepreneurs, particularly of the Silicon Valley stripe, are notoriously stingy, said Mitchell. "Most local entrepreneurs who have struck gold seem likely to keep ignoring the community's charitable needs," he wrote. Newsweek weighed in (with "The Wealth and Avarice of the CyberRich"), as did the Los Angeles Times. "Many Silicon Valley CEOs don't even think about community involvement for years and years," ethics lecturer and Sloan director Kirk Hanson, MBA '71, told the Los Angeles Times. "The entrepreneurial nature of people in the Valley doesn't promote community responsibility," added Becky Morgan, MBA '78 and CEO of Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, a nonprofit that attempts to link the private and public sectors to act on regional issues. "They don't want to be told what to do," she said. The problem may be that the new breed of young cybermoguls is just that -- young. "They need to get older," Peter Hero, MBA '66 and executive director of the Community Foundation of Santa Clara County, told Newsweek. Explained Susan Packard Orr, MBA '70, who runs the David and Lucile Packard Foundation: "There may be a perception that being philanthropic isn't very interesting and not much fun. But you get so much satisfaction knowing you can make a difference. You can get hooked on it." Two who are clearly hooked are Rod Beckström, MBA '87, and John Morgridge, MBA '57, said Mitchell, who singled them out as happy exceptions to the general run of cyber-Grinches in the Valley. Beckström, the CEO of C.ATS Software, is an aggressive fundraiser for the Environmental Defense Fund, of which he is a director, and serves several other charitable organizations. Cisco chairman Morgridge is known to encourage Cisco's employees to follow his own example in both working for the community and giving generously to favorite causes. Meanwhile, the online magazine Slate answered Turner with the "Slate 60," which ranks the 60 largest charitable contributions made by individuals in 1996, and numbered two GSB grads among them. Investor Robert Bass, MBA '74, and his wife, Anne, shared the No. 9 position; Nike founder Phil Knight, MBA '62, was No. 11. Donors of less than $5 million need not apply. -- Janet Zich |
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