Tulane University Freeman School BLOG

It’s been a few weeks since my last semester classes started - time for a recap:

Renewable Energy (optional) - great class! The professor, Linda Baynham, is ex-Entergy and now runs her own consulting company. She’s very well prepared and we’re covering all kinds of topics relevant to our nation’s energy needs, now and in the future. Here’s a a sample lecture. (ppt) We recently went on a field trip (my first in years) to a business and a new home development using solar and green building materials to offset their power consumption. I’ll try to get some video up soon.

International Finance (optional) A class on international currency trading, how to find arbitrage opportunities in various currencies that are mispriced in one exchange or another. We’re also looking at commodities trading. This isn’t actual trading like in Professor McNew or LeBlanc’s classes, rather this is learning the math behind the trading activities. Today computers do most/all of this stuff, thousands of times per second, but the foundation is still important to understand what and why things are happening. Not the most titillating stuff but still relevant for those who want to better understand world currency markets and various implications of monetary policy. Here’s the syllabus.

Ethics (required) There are three required classes I think should be rolled up into one semester long course: Ethics, Leadership and Managing people. Ethics and Leadership for sure; both are taught by Professor Chris McCusker (warning: awful pic ahead), and thus have a fair degree of overlap. Neither of the courses are particularly stimulating, not to say that there’s a lack of interest, but by the time Ethics rolls around in the last semester of the second year, most MBA’s do not want to sit through another required class which could have been rolled up into earlier material. Honestly - $9000 worth of classes seems ethically wrong of the school to impose on us. Look: leadership isn’t learned in a classroom, neither is ethics. The managing people class was useful, but there was definitely some crossover with the other two. I think the Organizational Behavior department at Tulane would benefit from additional variety.

Practice of Management IV (aka the Business Planning Class, required) – I’ve got mixed emotions about this class. Well I guess it’s not the class, rather the teacher, or lack thereof. The professor, Raja Roy, is great. He taught my Management of Technology and Innovation class last year (my fav class of year 1). The thing is, this is Professor Roy’s first year teaching this class – I/we/my classmates were expecting to be taught by John Elstrott. Dr. Elstrott has taught the business planning class forever, at least the last five years, certainly as long as I’ve been involved with Tulane. When I came down to visit as a prospective student two years ago, many of the kids I spoke with had great things to say about Elstrott, his class and his connections. Dr. Elstrott was the CFO of Celestial Seasonings, and is the lead director of Whole Paycheck. For whatever reason, Dr. Elstrott is not teaching the class this year. I thought he wanted to focus more on his own business ventures, which is fair, but many of the 2nd year’s are pretty bummed. Rather than fan the flames of speculation, I decided to go to the source.

So I asked Dr. Elstrott what was up. Turns out, I was simply uninformed. Dr. Elstrott told me he’s still very much involved in the Freeman School and with Entrepreneurship. Although the Freeman School is highly ranked in Entrepreneurship, it still pales in comparison to the resources the school devotes to finance. Thankfully, both Dr. Elstrott and Dean DeNisi recognize the importance of entrepreneurship and are taking steps to bolster our ranks. Enter Raja Roy. He’s super passionate about entrepreneurship and technology, as I can attest, and was recommended by Dr. Elstrott to succeed him in the class. Dr. Elstrott is revising his role to focus more on the needs of students and alumni out of the classroom – in the real venture world. He’s still available to meet with students to discuss their venture ideas (evidentially some of the current first year MBA’s have done this) as well as career planning and connecting students with business leaders in the field. His latest passion is centered around conscious and creative capitalism, something Bill Gates recently touched on in his speech to the WEF at Davos a few weeks back.

I’m bummed I won’t benefit directly from Dr. Elstrott in the classroom but am encouraged to hear his involvement with the Freeman School remains. The obvious positive to his new role is that through his increased research and interaction with others in the entrepreneurship field, Dr. Elstrott should attract more students and professors interested in entrepreneurship to join Professor Roy at Tulane. Unfortunately, there had to be a transition year for Dr. Elstrott and my class is the one. For those of you considering an entrepreneurship focus at the Freeman School fear not, Raja Roy is a great teacher and knows his stuff cold – my personal regret is not knowing (or inquiring) what was going on ahead of time in order to make a difference in my own MBA experience. The Roy-Elstrott tag team can only help future Freeman-ers with your with your game changing ideas and ventures.

Global Leadership IV: China - We’re going to China! It’s an 8 day trip where we’ll be teamed with kids from three different business schools in Beijing and working with them in a case competition while we’re there. While I’m excited about the trip (here’s the syllabus), the professor is doing his best job to caution us against speaking out too much or too favorably of the United States. Slights, says Jim Biteman, can occur over the most seemingly trivial aspect. China, says Biteman, still looks at foreigners as people looking to invade, take control of their enterprises and make money at the expense of China. While I’m not buying the scared straight speech, it’s always important to go into new environments and situations with an open mind. I’ll be listening more than speaking, at least for the first few days. Want to know more? Here’s our study guide. I’ll be updating you on the China trip as we get closer to the trip, and of course while we’re there.

So that’s it. The last classes of my Tulane MBA. A couple good ones, a couple check-the-box. That’s ok, I’m sure in a year when I’m up to my eyeballs in work I’ll long for the days when I could sleep in till 8am!

Have a great weekend,
Joel Yarmon

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