Six Terrific Professors at Michigan (Ross)

Continuing our series of admissions insights clipped from Veritas Prep's Annual Reports, our in-depth insider's guides to 15 of the world's top business schools, this week we look at six of the Ross School of Business' most popular professors. (Our Annual reports are absolutely free with registration, but we thought we'd share some snippets here to help get you started in your Ross research.)

The Ross faculty is populated with many prominent business leaders, researchers, and teachers. Among Ross students, there are a handful of professors who are considered a "must" to have for a class, due to their reputation both as educators and as experts. This list isn’t merely a collection of famous names, but rather the instructors that Ross students deem to be essential for the full experience.

These notable professors include:

• Aneel Karnani, Associate Professor and Chair of Strategy. Known among Ross students as a "tell it like it is" straight shooter, Professor Karnani is most notorious for his ongoing academic battle with fellow Ross faculty member C.K. Prahalad. The two have been going back and forth about a concept known as "bottom of the pyramid" (exploring the market potential of the world's poorest people) for years.
  What students appreciate most is how candid Professor Karnani is about his work and his viewpoints and how willing he is to discuss somewhat controversial positions in class. All of this takes place as part of his interest in global competition – one of his two chief areas of research and instruction, with the other being basic strategic management.


• M.P. Narayanan, Professor and Chair of Finance. Professor Narayanan teaches in both the full-time MBA and EMBA programs at Ross and specializes in capital management and strategic growth. Known to pick up a racket and swing it with some of his students, Professor Narayanan is known and loved for making finance as simple and easy to understand as possible. His stated goal is to help students "connect the dots" between simple concepts and complex outcomes and he often does that through clever and entertaining metaphors.


• Christie Nordhielm, Clinical Associate Professor of Marketing. Recruited away from Kellogg in 2004 after being one of students' favorites there year after year, Professor Nordhielm is well known for her "Big Picture" method for strategically breaking down marketing problems. In fact, she was one of the first pieces in Dean Robert J. Dolan's vision for the school, which was to teach students how to be thought and action leaders in every segment of business. Having known about Professor Nordhielm's revolutionary framework (formally known as The Big Picture: Integrating Marketing Strategy and Execution), Dolan made it his first order of business to nab Kellogg's 2003 Professor of the Year. At Ross, Professor Nordhielm is teaching her marketing framework to not only individual classes and sections (as she did at Kellogg), but also to the entire faculty. With a style suggestive of her early career in advertising (at Leo Burnett), Professor Nordhielm is a engaging speaker who also presents seminars to top companies as well as to the Ross Executive Program (run through the Marketing Center for Excellence, which she also heads up). Finally, she is also a singer and songwriter who often has friends over to her house for an evening of singing. While she is extremely available to students, she draws the line at the singing parties.


• Andrew Hoffman, Holcim Professor of Sustainable Enterprise. Professor Hoffman teaches at both Ross as well as the School of Natural Resources & Environment, and also serves as the Associate Director of the Erb Institute. He has published seven books and over 70 articles on sustainability and is a thought leader in every conceivable area of environmental impact on business. That said, Professor Hoffman's actually most popular for his Bargaining Behavior and Influence Skills course which almost always has the highest "market clear" price under the Ross bidding system. In some years, it will take more than half of a student's bid points to land a spot in Professor Hoffman's class.


• Gautam Ahuja, Professor of Strategy. A much decorated professor at the University of Texas, Ahuja has continued to rack up awards since coming to Michigan in 2003, where he was named the best professor in the entire PhD program in 2004. He is often cited by Ross students as a favorite professor despite his broad involvement in multiple programs and his research on innovation and technology as it relates to strategy has been groundbreaking.


• Linda Lim, Professor of Strategy. Often described as "plugged in," Professor Lim is a foremost expert on Southeast Asia and aims most of her research at that area of the world. Known for bringing her research to the classroom, Professor Lim's students enjoy looking at multinational problems from multiple angles, and often find themselves discussing her op-ed pieces or interviews from major publications. Her World Economy course is a very popular option for those students seeking to complete one of Ross' unique strategy requirements for graduation.

Today's blog post was clipped from our Ross Annual Report, one of 15 completely free guides to the world's top business schools, available on our site. If you're ready to start building your own application for Ross or other top MBA programs, call us at 1-800-925-7737 and speak with an MBA admissions expert today!