blog of kaiyen

This is the fourth of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. But only here can I write as much as I want 

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.

The facts

I took Professor Shaver’s class in Winter Quarter, 2008.  It was the 5:30 section, Tuesday and Thursdays, I think.  Already Winter seems like a long ways away.  The course, Management 512, is titled the ‘Social Psychology of Leadership’ but is best described generically as a leadership course.  Professor Shavers does go over the material out there, but it’s not research-based.  The book introduces some of the research concepts out there, but essentially Shavers challenges each student on how to handle certain situations.  She poses problems and asks us what to do.  The course is pretty loose, mechanically.  A bit of reading, some questionnaires, and each group has to do a presentation on a particular case.  There is also a final individual paper.  But the course is otherwise discussion-based.

My motivation for taking the course was two-fold – one practical, the other programmatic.  First, it was an requirement for the leadership concentration at the school.  So I intended to take it at some point.  Second, it was available that quarter, plain and simple.  So I took it.  However, many of the students in the class are taking it just as they are finishing up their time at Leavey, and you’ll often have students taking Capstone (the final class in the program) sitting next to you.  It’s actually a nice mix of students, though, and really breaks one free from the first year or so of requirements and core courses.

Them’s the facts. Now read on for the review.
Read the rest of this entry »