Doctoral Programs

Happy New Year! I hope that 2012 is a year full of great adventures and happy moments. As the new year begins here at HBS, the campus is missing the presence of students and participants. In addition to well-deserved time-off over the holidays, our students are engaged in a variety of activities around the world.

On the research front, we have several students in spots around the world conducting field research. For example, Ryann Manning is in Sierra Leone working on a project studying performance issues with healthcare workers in that country. Another example is Hummy Song who is Zambia working on a field experiment with Nava Ashraf on better understanding the determinants of men's preferences for fertility and family planning. And the list goes on and on.

Pat Satterstrom is participating in Michael Porter's seminar on "Value-Based Health Care Delivery," a three-week intensive seminar examining organizations working to implement these delivery principles in practice.

Several students on the job market are in the middle of their search activities. We have around 20 students on the market this year, representing all of eight of our degree programs. Several of those students took advantage of the American Economic Association (AEA) annual conference that took place in Chicago last week to interview collectively with several schools. I know of at least a half-dozen of our students who took part in those interviews and I'm looking forward to hearing about the job market talk invitations that occur as a result.

As a final example of our students taking advantage of the January term, two students are taking part in the School's Immersion Experience Programs (IXP's). Lisa Kwan is currently in China on an IXP entitled "China: Understanding China's Business Environment," and David Yang is participating in an entrepreneurial ventures program in the Silicon Valley. Both of these programs place students (MBA's and doctoral students) in markets around the world and provide them with the opportunity to experience business in a context different from the HBS classroom environment.

All of this is just a glimpse into the ongoing work of our wonderful doctoral students...even though class isn't in session, they are busy working on a variety of endeavors that will add insights into their ongoing research efforts.

All the best, JFK

It has been a busy fall term at HBS. After welcoming our new students at the end of August, we've all been busy with research, courses, and staying engaged as a community of students, faculty, and staff. Early in the term, we welcomed our new faculty chair of the HBS doctoral programs, Kathleen McGinn, the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration. We are thrilled to have Kathleen in this important role and look forward to working with her in leading the doctoral programs. Kathleen took over from Mihir Desai, the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, who oversaw the HBS doctoral programs for the past three years. Mihir played a key role in providing steady leadership and stability during a period of dramatic change in the doctoral programs; our thanks to Mihir.

Our students continue to overwhelm me with their research ideas and creative intellect. We recently honored five of our students with the Wyss and Martin Awards. The Wyss Award is awarded to those doctoral students who have excelled at academic research while enrolled in the HBS Doctoral Programs. The Martin Award is presented to students in the Ph.D. in Business Economics program who have produced outstanding academic research while in enrolled in their program. This year, the field of submissions was truly extraordinary and, as a result, the selection process was very difficult. In the end, the faculty selected four students for the Wyss Award and one for the Martin Award.

The 2011 Wyss Award recipients:

Ryan Buell (DBA, Technology & Operations Management)

Zoe Chance (DBA,Marketing)

Andras Tilcsik (PhD, Organizational Behavior)

Chia-Jung Tsay (PhD, Organizational Behavior)

The 2011 Martin Award recipient:

Jacob Leshno (PhD, Business Economics)

The Doctoral Programs office staff is in the midst of several recruiting trips in preparation for the December 1, 2011 admissions application deadline. To date, we have visited Princeton U., Stanford U., UC-Berkeley, University of Southern California, Harvard College, and Hampden-Sydney College (where we met with several surround schools). Later this month, we will be in Wisconsin and in Chicago. So far, the interest level is high and the early indicators are this will be another very successful admissions season.

Lastly, I wanted to mention a few of the amazing events we have had this fall, including a doctoral program BBQ, the HBS Alumni Achievement Awards, a performance by Yo Yo Ma and several other great musicians, and the IBM challenge where HBS and MIT students competed against the WATSON computer of Jeopardy fame.

I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the beautiful autumn weather. I could go on and on about the HBS doctoral programs, but I'm going to save something for the next time.

It's the Wednesday prior to Labor Day and that means the beginning of a new academic year at Harvard. The Doctoral Programs Office is busy this week hosting new student orientation, seeing current students back on campus after a summer of research activities, and getting course enrollments finalized for the Fall term.

Over the past two days, we held new student orientation for our 26 new students. Our focus for those two days is to provide a sense of what it means to be an HBS student/scholar. We provided the students with an overview of their program requirements, a series of panels and presentations about research and the resources of the school, and information about how to be an engaged member of the HBS community. Given that the Boston area was hit by Tropical Storm Irene on Sunday, we were fortunate to be able to hold the orientation sessions without a hitch. This year, we added a new session on communications skills, led by Allison Gilmore from DuMore Improv. It was fun and developmental at the same time. Allison did a superb job of engaging our students and the students had a great time. The initial feedback we have received from those who participated has been very positive.

The new students are a great group. We have 10 DBA students, 6 OB students, 1 HPM student, and 9 BE students starting the program this term. Demographically, there are 14 males and 12 females, 12 students from outside of the U.S., and the average age is about 27 years of age. From an educational background, these students come from large universities and small liberal arts colleges with the common characteristic of being very talented. We're looking forward to seeing the new students develop new skills and creating new knowledge in their chosen fields.

Today is also the first day of classes at Harvard. Along with the new students, many of our current students are beginning another year of coursework and research. Of special note, I want to share that several of our students have been singled out for their work:

• Erin Reid (OB) has been selected to receive the Emerald Best Student Paper Award, given by the Gender & Diversity in Organizations (GDO) Division at the Academy of Management (2011) for her paper, "Passing as Superman: The Ideal Worker and Men's Professional Identities."
• Andras Tilcsik (OB) has won the James D. Thompson Award for best graduate student paper from the American Sociological Association's Organizations, Occupations, and Work section.
• Kristin Wilson (STR) and Stan Veuger have been selected to receive the The Public and Nonprofit (PNP) Division's award for the Best Paper Written by a Doctoral Student.
• Sameer Srivastava (OB) has been selected to receive the State Farm Companies Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Award.
• Melissa Valentine (HPM) was awarded the 2011 Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award in Organization Design, Effectiveness, and Change.

This is a very exciting time of the year as new opportunities and possibilities start anew. I wish all our students great success and a hearty welcome. See you around campus.

It is the middle of summer and it's hot in Boston. As with many parts of the country, we're experiencing hot and muggy weather. Of course, come January we'll be wishing for days like today.

One of the common questions I seem to get at this time of year, usually from students, is "do you get the summer off?" Unfortunately, that's not the case. The Doctoral staff is working all summer closing out the past year and ramping up for the new academic year. We already have 12 of our 26 new students on campus and the remainder will be here next month. So, the summer is a time to take some well-deserved vacation, but there is still much to do. Here are a couple of examples:

In June, the HBS Doctoral team participated in a Doctorate in Business Recruiting Forum held at the Sloan School at MIT. This event was hosted by DOCNET, a consortium of schools with doctoral programs in business, and attended by over 200 guests and 18 schools, included both a faculty and student panel discussion and an informational forum. The panel of MIT/Sloan faculty and students was excellent and the guests who attended were able to about the doctoral education experience first-hand. After the panel, a forum was held for those interested in finding out more about the doctoral programs at the participating schools. From our perspective, the event was very successful. There were 3 or 4 staff members at the HBS table and we talked to easily over 100 perspective applicants, from the local Boston area as well as from locations as far away as Georgia. If you are interested in pursuing a doctorate in business, you should definitely check out the DOCNET website .

Here on campus, we've recently completed two projects that will support our ongoing marketing efforts. We have designed a new marketing brochure that is part of the larger HBS-wide campaign, "The World's Thinking." For the Doctoral programs, this campaign really highlights that HBS is a school where new thinking begins in the form of research and cutting-edge management ideas. It's a great piece and I'm looking forward to showing it to prospective applicants as we begin our recruiting travels. The second piece focuses on the research that our doctoral students are working on or have recently published. It's amazing to see the over 200 different research works that have been produced by our current students.

I hope everyone has a great summer. If you're thinking about applying to one of the eight HBS doctoral programs, our application will be available at the end of August. In the meantime, take a look at our web page to learn about our programs, the School, and the application process.

Best, John