School Notes: School of Management
May/June 2011

Levin, Oster, and Snyder on how to educate future leaders

In the lead article of Q8 magazine, Yale University president Richard C. Levin, Yale SOM dean Sharon M. Oster, and dean-designate Edward A. Snyder discuss what business schools need to do to train leaders with the long-term perspective and sense of integrity to create durable value for their organizations. They argue that business leadership has an enormous impact on the broader society and that MBA education can be a crucial factor in producing leaders who advance the interests of their own organizations and the well-being of the broader society. Says Oster, "When we teach the MBAs, we are getting them at a formative moment for leadership skills. It’s a moment when things can come together for them, when some of their inchoate ideas about how the world works and what they want to be and who they are actually gel and connect with concrete aspirations, not just vague thoughts and vague dreams. It is a key time." Read the full discussion at http://qn.som.yale.edu/content/who-needs-leaders.

Business leaders explain how diversity works in the workplace

On February 16, leaders from four very different organizations—Major League Baseball, Goldman Sachs, Teach for America, and Aetna—came together to talk about the importance of diversity in a global marketplace. The panel served as a keynote for SOMunity, a series of events celebrating the diversity of the Yale SOM community. All four speakers stressed that while diversity has become a central component of their organizations' strategies, hurdles still remain, both financial and cultural. "We recognize that if people have the opportunity to express who they are, they are more engaged, more satisfied, and more likely to stay with the company. It’s a strategy that works in the U.S. and around the globe," said Raymond Arroyo, chief diversity officer for Aetna.

SOM students teach statistics course in South Africa

For two weeks, 12 Yale SOM students worked out of the University of Cape Town, instructing roughly 80 academics, government officials, and nonprofit leaders in the intricacies of data analysis. The group traveled to South Africa as the final step in a course called the African Data Analysis Project, which is taught by James Levinsohn, professor of economics. Throughout the fall semester, students had deepened their skills in statistical analysis in order to help others an ocean away. Each week during the semester, SOM students drilled down into a new module, learning not just how to interpret complex data sets but to begin to see how the lessons from them can be applied to real-world problems. In Cape Town, the students worked ten-hour days. Mornings were spent teaching the South African participants the basics of each lesson; during the afternoons, SOM students came up with problem sets designed to put new knowledge to the test.