State of the School
from Dean Tom Campbell


October 5, 2007

Dear Haas Alumni and Friends,

It is my great pleasure to report to you once again on your School and its wonderful accomplishments. The Haas School of Business has never been stronger, a fact that is reflected in the Wall Street Journal rankings of top business schools, which were just published on September 17. The Haas School’s Full-time MBA Program was rated # 2 in the nation, the highest ranking that our MBA program has ever achieved in any of the major rankings. It is a testament to the quality of our students, the hard work of our faculty and staff, and the continued support of many alumni and friends that the School has steadily advanced in so many of the external rankings.

You may already know that I have decided not to seek an additional term as Dean after my current term is completed in July 2008. Since I began my deanship in 2002, it has been a tremendous honor to lead the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. I have been most positively impressed with the loyalty of the alumni, the excellence of the faculty, the tremendous energy and high quality of the staff, and, most of all, the students, who have made this job a joy.

Over the coming year I will increase my efforts to expand the permanent, full-time faculty—which has been one of my major goals—so the school can improve its ratio of faculty to students and offer a wider variety of courses. We’re doing very well on so many fronts, but we still are not where we should be toward our goal of smaller class sizes. That will come as we hire more faculty. Happily, we have great news on our ability to do so.

On October 29, at 12:30 pm, the School will celebrate an historic event as we dedicate the current faculty office building as the Gerson Bakar Faculty Building. This honors the generosity of Haas alumnus Gerson Bakar, BS 48. He had originally given $25 million for the development of a residence for executive education. When this proved unfeasible, I went to Mr. Bakar and asked if he would allow a transfer of the gift directly into endowment to use for faculty support. He willingly agreed.

Our school's greatest need at this point is to increase the number of our faculty. Every outside review has confirmed that fact. It is immensely valuable to the school to have the earnings on $25 million available every year for additional faculty slots. We are estimating that the Gerson Bakar gift will enable us to hire 5 more permanent faculty members than we otherwise could hire at once, and, depending on the growth of these endowment funds, even more in future years. The search process for the new faculty members has already begun.

Leading Through Innovation

The School is making great progress on strengthening its brand image of “leading through innovation.” This past year saw the implementation of both “Haas@Work” and “Peers@Haas,” two of the program initiatives that are coming out of our plans to create an “Institute for Business Innovation” for the School that will encompass experiential learning programs for the students. It also supports programs to help our faculty become even better teachers.

The Haas@Work program is a unique program in applied innovation. It offers our students an extraordinary lesson in putting fresh ideas to work. As part of Haas@Work, client companies are offered the opportunity to benefit from the knowledge, skills and expertise of our MBA students (and, where appropriate, other UC Berkeley students), faculty, and executives-in-residence. Through a series of preparatory activities at both the client site and at Haas, together with a day-long workshop at a company location, student teams work with that company for 100 days to create and implement an innovative, value-creating change that addresses a meaningful business challenge. This past year, our students worked on two projects, at Hotwire.com and at Cisco. Both projects were successes for the companies and the students.

The Peers@Haas Program is designed to enable our students to achieve a favorable and measurable long-term change in one or two critical behaviors that elevate their leadership potential. The selected behaviors will be based on each student’s Leadership Self Assessment Action Plan completed during the core leadership course. Behavior change does not occur simply by writing an action plan. It requires consistent and structured follow-up activities, and that’s what Peers@Haas provides. Our pilot program launched with 100 students on January 28, 2007.

The Undergraduate Program

Our students continue to be exemplary. The Haas School now ranks in the top three in the two major undergraduate rankings — BusinessWeek and US News & World Report.

The Haas School’s undergraduate program was ranked #3 overall — and came in 1st place in a related survey of corporate recruiters — in BusinessWeek’s second annual undergraduate business school assessment of US schools last March. This is a huge improvement over last year, when the Haas School was #12 overall and #41 in the recruiters’ poll.

Last August, US News rated the Haas School’s undergraduate program #3 among US business schools, tied with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Haas has ranked #3 in this survey for four consecutive years.

The Haas School welcomed 352 new undergraduate business majors with a day-long orientation on July 6. The orientation marks an early start to the program, enabling students to get a chance to bond with their peers over the summer semester. This year, 1,803 students applied to the upper-division Haas Undergraduate Program, 489 from UC Berkeley and 1,314 from other schools. About one quarter of the class is made up of transfer students.

The Full-time MBA Program

The 239 new students entering the Full-time Berkeley MBA Program emerged from an increasingly competitive field. Applications increased by 20% this past year, up from 2,727 to 3,276. Admission was offered to 14% of the applicant pool. Thirty-nine percent are international, representing 34 different countries, from China and the Czech Republic to Venezuela and Vietnam. The students possess a median five years of professional experience and their median age is 28.

Many students in the incoming class bring experience in management consulting, finance, and high technology. Two individuals are studying in the program on Fulbright Scholarships and one is a Point Foundation Scholar. Among the students is a Navy SEAL officer, a volunteer who has helped prison inmates write business plans, and a former executive producer of a television quiz show!

The Evening & Weekend MBA Program

The Evening & Weekend MBA Program welcomed 243 new students with a two-day orientation, held August 3-5. These fully employed students have an average age of 32 and 8 years of work experience. Twenty-six countries are represented by the class, with 70% of the students speaking more than one language.

The students' work experience is wide-ranging; students include a US Air Force officer, a wedding planner, a pharmacist, a US Navy mission commander, and a former television reporter. One student worked for the Peace Corps in Malawi; two have climbed to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The new Evening & Weekend MBA students join second-year and third-year candidates, bringing total program enrollment to 766.

The Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program

Sixty-six professionals that comprise the sixth class of the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program began their studies at the Haas School, starting with an orientation on May 22. The class members bring with them a wealth of expertise from companies that include Google, Goldman Sachs, Accenture, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, KLA-Tencor, Microsoft, Oracle, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Synopsys.

Students in the class possess an average of 13 years of work experience. Twenty percent work in high technology, 12% work in consulting, 11% work in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, 9% each work in finance and in computer-related services, 6% each work in telecommunications, retail, and in education/government/nonprofit, and 5% each work in real estate and consumer products.

The students range in age from 29 to 55, with a median age of 36, and 32% already hold advanced degrees. More students (11%) are traveling from Southern California for their studies than in previous years. They are among the 23% coming from outside the Bay Area, with students joining the program this year from Colorado, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington. For the second year in a row, the new class will have a joint block of study with the current Berkeley-Columbia class, allowing both classes additional networking opportunities.

The MFE Program

Sixty-one students started work in the Master's in Financial Engineering Program, which has entered its sixth year. Classes for these new students began last March. One indicator of distinctiveness can be measured by the fact that more than half the class's members already hold advanced degrees: 23% have a Ph.D. and 36% have master’s degrees. Their past employers count such firms as Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, IBM, and KPMG. Their professional experiences include finance (21%), engineering (15%), research and development (15%), information systems (11%), education (10%), and consulting (7%). Members of the class come from 15 countries, including Australia, Iran, and Peru.

The Ph.D. Program

Fifteen new Ph.D. students were chosen from an applicant pool of 401 to enter the Ph.D. program at Haas. Ten of the students hold master's degrees. Five are international students, from Brazil, India, Israel, and Korea. Admission of the new students brings total enrollment in the Haas School Ph.D. program to 78. Among the distinctions of this year's entering Ph.D. class is a median GRE quantitative score of 800 — a perfect score.

Four of the new Ph.D. students have enrolled in Business and Public Policy, three in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, and two each in Accounting, Finance, Marketing, and Real Estate.

Faculty News

Haas continues to attract faculty from the very best of our peer universities. Six new faculty members have joined the Haas School starting this academic year.

Brian Uzzi, who held the Richard L. Thomas Distinguished Professor of Leadership at Northwestern's Kellogg School, will join the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group (OBIR) as a full professor in January 2008 and be awarded the Warren E. and Carol Spieker Chair in Leadership. Uzzi has been widely cited and has won numerous awards for his work on trust and cooperation in business networks. He has also won the teaching award in Kellogg's MBA program for his courses in leadership. Uzzi plans to teach leadership in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program next spring.

Dmitri Livdan from Texas A&M University has joined the Finance Group as assistant professor this fall. Livdan's work focuses on corporate finance. His 2004 Journal of Finance paper was nominated for the Brattle Prize for the most outstanding work in that field.

Jo-Ellen Pozner has joined the OBIR Group as an assistant professor. She recently completed her Ph.D. at the Kellogg School of Management. Her research addresses problems in corporate malfeasance and governance. She will contribute to research and teaching strengths in the areas of corporate ethics and responsibility, strategy, and leadership.

Patricia Dechow joined the Accounting Group as a visiting professor last year and this fall joined the full-time faculty as the Donald H. and Ruth F. Seiler Professor in Public Accounting. Since 1997, DeChow has been at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and before that was Anheuser-Busch Assistant Professor of Accounting at Wharton from 1992 until 1997. Her research interests include the optimism in analysts' earnings forecasts around equity offerings, the role of accounting information in firm valuation, the role of short sellers in correcting miss-priced securities, and the incentives for earnings management. During her time as a visiting professor, DeChow quickly proved her skill in teaching, winning the coveted Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Ph.D. program.

Nicolae Garleanu, formerly assistant professor of finance at Wharton, will be teaching the core "Introduction to Finance" (MBA 203) course this fall. He earned a Ph.D. in finance from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and master's and bachelor's degrees in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania. Garleanu's research interests include asset pricing in imperfect markets, liquidity, contracts, financial innovations and security design, and auctions. His research has won awards from the Western Finance Association and the Association for Investment Management and Research.

Terry Taylor has been the Barbara and Meyer Feldberg Associate Professor at Columbia since 2005. He previously taught operations management courses at Columbia, where he received the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence in a Core Course. Taylor studies supply chain management and served as director of research of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Supply Chain Management Forum before moving to Columbia in 2001. He earned both a Ph.D. in management science and engineering and a bachelor's of science in industrial engineering from Stanford. Taylor will start teaching in the spring.

In other faculty news, Oliver E. Williamson, Haas School professor emeritus, and world-renowned expert in transaction cost economics, was honored as a 2007 Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association (AEA). The AEA bestows distinguished fellowships on no more than three economists of high distinction in the US and Canada each year. Past recipients of the AEA honor include Nobel Laureates Gerard Debreu, an emeritus professor of economics and mathematics at UC Berkeley, and the late John C. Harsanyi, a longtime professor at the Haas School and UC Berkeley's Department of Economics.

Other News

The Haas School was highlighted as a top school for entrepreneurs in a September Fortune Small Business feature that is titled "America's Best Colleges for Entrepreneurs." Fortune Small Business's listings are the result of seven months of interviews with hundreds of entrepreneurs, professors, students, and alumni. Haas was featured for its strength in five of Fortune Small Business's eight categories:

• The school's interdisciplinary efforts across campus in the "Double Majors" category;
• The Berkeley-Executive MBA Program in the "Executives" category;
• Entrepreneurship teaching in the MBA Program in the "MBAs" category;
• The school's Global Social Venture Competition in the "Social Entrepreneurship" category;
• Entrepreneurship teaching for undergraduates in the "Undergrads" category.

We were very pleased to honor PowerBar co-creator Jennifer Maxwell, BS 88, as the first recipient of the Cora Jane Flood Philanthropy Award at the third annual Haas School Women in Leadership Dinner, held at the Claremont Hotel on April 19.

The Cora Jane Flood Award is a new award that the School created to recognize a member of the Haas School community whose philanthropy has made a significant impact on the school. The award is named in honor of Cora Jane Flood, who provided the original donation to establish our business school in 1898. Flood's gift was the largest private contribution in UC Berkeley's then 30-year history.

The Women in Leadership dinner celebrates women's leadership and philanthropy at the Haas School. This year's dinner, which attracted 90 attendees, included a panel discussion with Margo Alexander, BS 68; Carol Meyer, MBA 71; and Barbara Desoer, MBA 77. The discussion was facilitated by former Dean Laura Tyson, who is now a professor in the Business and Public Policy Group at Haas.

Records were set at the Haas School this past year when the Haas Annual Fund reached new highs for contributions and participation. For 2006-07, the Annual Fund surpassed its goal as approximately 3,900 alumni, friends, and corporate partners invested more than $2.8 million towards the school's innovative programs

This marks the fifth consecutive year in which the Annual Fund has exceeded its fundraising goal. The record-breaking fundraising represents an increase of over 10%, or $272,814, over the 2005-2006 Annual Fund. In addition, the number of contributors grew by 550 over last year. These were our highest Annual Fund numbers ever.

The school's newest alumni, the Full-time MBA class of 2007, got into the spirit of giving during the final weeks leading up to graduation, as part of the Lifelong Connections Campaign. As part of that campaign, 99.6% of the class committed $201,064 in multi-year pledges.

Being the Dean of our business school, recognized as one of the finest business schools in the world, is a continuing joy. I hope that you are as proud of the Haas School of Business as I am and that you will continue to stay connected and support the School. Go Bears! And hire Haas!

With best wishes,

Tom Campbell
Bank of America Dean and Professor of Business