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Hau Lee Honored for Service to AlumiFebruary, 2003
HAU LEE DESIGNS GLOBAL SUPPLY chains and also acts a bit like one himself, linking alumni/ae with e-business, manufacturing, and distribution logistical issues around the world. That is why the Stanford Business School Alumni Association chose Lee to receive its 2002 Jaedicke Silver Apple Award for service to the association. Lee, the Thoma Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology, is also director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, director of the gsb Executive Education program Managing Your Supply Chain for Global Competitiveness, and editor-in-chief of the journal Management Science. He was presented with the Tiffany apple at the Business School’s 43rd annual Alumni Weekend. In his acceptance speech, Lee noted that he has talked with alums over barbeque in Brazil, on the riverfront of Shanghai, and at Hobee’s in Palo Alto. “Alumni are at the beginning and end and every stage of my research,” he said. “I benefit tremendously from their knowledge, experiences, re-sources, and networks.” WHEN JACK McDONALD started teaching his investment course at the Business School, the Dow stood at 777 and the Nasdaq did not yet exist. When the first students enrolled in Jim Van Horne’s Money and Capital Markets course, Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States. Between them, Van Horne and McDonald estimate they have taught over 12,000 students over the past 37 years as the two most enduring members of the finance faculty. Van Horne, the A. P. Giannini Professor of Banking and Finance, first taught Money and Capital Markets in 1965. Today “the markets have changed drastically,” he said. “It would be hard to come up with more than 5 percent overlap between what I was teaching then and what I teach today.” McDonald, now the IBJ Professor of Finance, offered his first section of Investment in 1968. Although the content has changed, McDonald taught the same topic for 35 years. In 1976, Business School Dean Arjay Miller introduced McDonald to a friend of his—Warren Buffett. For more than a quarter century, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway has been one of a string of business leaders who have taken part in case discussions in McDonald’s classroom. “Warren Buffett’s stock was $60 a share the first time he came,” McDonald recalled. “In November it was $72,000. Students have always thought it was too late to invest.” What has changed? Market structures, including the emergence of Silicon Valley and the venture capital and private equity markets. The classroom environment also has evolved. In 1968, McDonald’s assistant couldn’t get 68 copies of the assignment ready in time using a ditto master process. In the fall of 2000, he began experimenting with using video to expand the number of students who could enroll. One thing that has remained steady, McDonald says, is the use of classic texts: The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham; Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, by Philip A. Fisher; and Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841 by Charles Mackay. AUTHORED BY Business School Professor Evan Porteus, the recently published Foundations of Stochastic Inventory Theory is both an advanced textbook designed to prepare doctoral students to do research on the mathematical foundations of inventory theory and a reference work for those al-ready engaged in such research. Porteus, the Sanwa Bank Ltd. Professor of Management Science, describes foundational concepts, methods, and tools that prepare the reader to analyze inventory problems in which uncertainty plays a key role. All 14 chapters in the book and four of the 5 appendixes conclude with exercises that either solidify or extend the concepts introduced. Some of these exercises have served as PHD qualifying examination questions in the operations, information, and technology area at the Business School. The book is published by Stanford University Press. Porteus, who is also director of the School’s doctoral program, has focused his academic work on technological systems as a member of the operations, information, and technology faculty. The field concentrates on the coordinated function of technology, people, and operating procedures in the execution of ongoing tasks. He was elected in late 2002 as a fellow of the Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society. The selection recognizes outstanding research and scholarship in operations management. The society is part of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) which represents professionals in the fields of operations research and the management sciences. |
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AT A CEREMONY in Germany’s Nuremberg Castle on Oct. 31, Paul Romer accepted the prestigious Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics for outstanding achievement and contributions to the field of economics. The relatively new honor, accompanied by a €25,000 cash prize, is among the world’s highest accolades for academic economists. Romer is the fourth recipient of the award, which is conferred every two years and financed by a foundation established in 1993 by Hertha Recktenwald, the widow of the internationally known economist for whom the prize is named. Romer, who is the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at the Business School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, was selected by a committee of internationally recognized scholars who cited the outstanding quality of his contributions to the development of “endogenous growth theory” or “new growth theory.” This body of work began with his 1983 doctoral thesis. Romer makes two basic points: that economic growth is driven by new ideas and advances in technology, and by creating appropriate economic incentives, government can increase the trend rate of growth in a way that can make all citizens better off. Prior to his theory, economists assumed economic growth in a physical world was constrained by diminishing returns and scarcity of resources, and the only offsetting force—serendipitous discovery—could not be understood using standard economic tools. In the classroom, Romer is contributing to the understanding of economics. He recently cofounded Aplia, a Web-based publisher of teaching materials and interactive lessons for colleges. Its first product, Principles of Microeconomics, was introduced this fall to approximately 8,000 students in 127 colleges and universities. The company offers Web-based tools and content for professors teaching economics courses, including market experiments where students trade with each other in real time and machine-scored homework assignments with graphs that students create and modify. THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION has honored Martin Ruef, assistant professor of strategic management, for coauthoring the best book in the preceding two years in medical sociology. Published in 2000, Institutional Change and Healthcare Organizations: From Professional Dominance to Managed Care, is based on research conducted by a team led by Stanford sociologist W. Richard Scott. It describes changes in the health care systems of the San Francisco Bay Area over 50 years and relates those to changes in basic demography, values, and beliefs at the national, state, and local levels.
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