Rotman School Associate Dean Honoured with Distinguished Educator Award by Academy of Management
Toronto,August 14, 2012 – Faculty as well as current and former PhD students from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management were honoured with numerous awards at the recent Academy of Management conference held in Boston earlier this month. The Academy of Management is a leading professional association for scholars dedicated to creating and disseminating knowledge about management and organizations. Founded in 1936, the Academy of Management is the oldest and largest scholarly management association in the world.
Prof. Anita McGahan, Associate Dean, Research, was presented with the Academy of Management Distinguished Educator Award for her career achievements inside and outside of the classroom.
“Prof. McGahan’s contributions to management education have been numerous – not just in her classroom teaching, but in her development of teaching materials, in her mentorship of young teachers and doctoral students and in her advocacy for management education reform. Watching her teach is an inspiring, if somewhat humbling, experience. What makes her so distinctive is not just her energy and enthusiasm in the classroom but how she couples an ability to demand quality in classroom discussion while maintaining kindness in her handling of students,” said Prof. Albert A. Cannella Jr. of Arizona State University, who chaired the Academy’s Career Achievement Awards Committee. “Beyond her own teaching and her impact on the teaching of others, she has demonstrated a very high commitment to changing business education so that it is focused on improving society.”
He added, “She is using her teaching and research to highlight the complex and deeply-rooted management issues underlying pressing societal problems. Her belief is that business schools can have an enormous positive impact on the world. She advocates for a turn away from the focus on investor returns and toward creativity and problem solving; away from value capture and toward value creation. She wants to redirect the focus of business education toward the world’s most important problems and to do so, change the way we teach. She has begun to spread the word, for example, through her appearance at TEDx conference (www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Ce8nJ0y5o&feature=youtu.be) and in publications aimed at broad audiences.”
Prof. McGahan, also holds the Rotman Chair in Management at the Rotman School, directs the Rotman PhD program, and is cross appointed to the UofT’s Munk School of Global Affairs. She earned her B.A. degree in Humanities from Northwestern University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, as well as an M.B.A (with high distinction as a Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School and M.A. and Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Prior to joining the Rotman School in 2007, she taught at Boston University and Harvard Business School. In addition to her affiliation with the University of Toronto, she is currently a Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University and Chief Economist in the Division of Global Health and Human Rights at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Prof. McGahan previously held visiting academic appointments at Harvard Medical School, London Business School, the Australian Graduate School of Management, and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Her research has focused on models of industry evolution and the evolution of competitive advantage. The focus of her current work is on entrepreneurship in the public interest and global health. Academic publications include studies on the health delivery, pharmaceutical, medical devices, consumer electronics, brewing and insurance industries, among others. She is the author of How Industries Evolve (HBS Press, 2004) and more than one hundred published materials, including academic articles, case studies, and notes. She is an Area Editor at the Strategic Management Journal and Management Science and is on the Boards of the Academy of Management Review and Strategic Organization.
Prof. McGahan has taught courses in strategy at the University of Toronto, Harvard Business School, London Business School and Boston University. At each university and at all levels of teaching, she has received rewards for outstanding teaching and she is consistently ranked as among the best faculty in every program in which she teaches.
In other news from the Academy of Management, two Rotman PhD students were honoured for their research. Octavio Martinez was awarded the Business Policy and Strategy Distinguished Student Paper Award, and Christian Catalini won the same award in the Technology and Innovation Management Division.
Three former Rotman PhD students also won awards. Jay Horwitz, currently an assistant professor at Bocconi, won the Technology and Innovation Management Best Dissertation Award, while Paul Seaborn, an assistant professor at the University of Denver, took the Business Policy and Strategy Dissertation Finalist Award. Colleen Stuart, who is now a post doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon, won the Organizational Behaviour Division Best Paper Based on a Dissertation Award.
A paper co-authored by Prof. Hugh Gunz, who is cross-appointed to the University of Toronto Mississauga, was published in the Best Paper proceedings for the AOM meeting and was a finalist as best paper for the Careers Division.
The Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto is redesigning business education for the 21st century with a curriculum based on Integrative Thinking. Located in the world’s most diverse city, the Rotman School fosters a new way to think that enables the design of creative business solutions. The School is currently raising $200 million to ensure Canada has the world-class business school it deserves. For more information, visit http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca . Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
Voice: (416) 946-3818
E-mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca