Review: Professor Oliver Yu, OMIS, Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business
This is the third 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 Yu?s OMIS (operations management and?something) 355 course in Spring 2008. The course is designed around computer-based decision-making, though we do not use computers at all. Professor Yu wanted us to understand how various computer programs that helped in decision-making were designed, rather than just sitting down with those applications and not using our brains. I thought this was a pretty good idea. The class section I took met at 5:30, Tuesday and Thursdays. The course had 2 midterms, a final, and a group homework assignments (roughly 1 per session). We also had a lot of extra credit opportunities and the professor was clearly determined to help us through the course.
Two caveats: First, I was worried that I would not fare as well in 355 with other professors, and had heard about Yu’s extra credit and desire to help us pass the course. Also, he has changed his curriculum a bit and now (writing in Summer 2008) has students do homework individually. I believe the overall content is still the same, though.
Them’s the facts. Now read on for the review.