Transformational Education > A transformational educational experience
John Quelch on the transformational power of HBS
Transcript
And I think the transformational power of the institution has come home to me more in the last ten years than when I first started here, in the sense that although when you're a young professor you know if you've hit a home run in a class, and you're so grateful when you get the feedback at the end of the year that indicates the students have appreciated what you've tried to do for them.
But where you really see the payoff is twenty years later, when students come out of the blue at alumni club events, or in a major airport anywhere in the world, and stop you, and talk to you about the class that you taught, and how you called on them to open that particular case. And, of course, as you're standing there in Zurich airport listening to this, you're thinking, "My God, did I give the guy a decent grade or not?" [Laughs]
It's simultaneously unnerving, but at the same time extraordinarily rewarding that twenty plus years later someone would spot you, and come up to you, and thank you for helping develop their capabilities. And that's when you really understand the transformational power of the process here.