End of mod follies and controversies

Mod I officially ended this past Friday. For me, it ended the day before because I don’t have Friday classes. The last session of every class is always an interesting spectacle to observe. The professor will almost always gives an end of class talk such as “okay everyone, it’s been fun, keep in touch” and the students proceed to generously showers him with applause.

 

My last class on Thursday was customers relations management and we spent the last twenty minutes playing this game the professor created called “Who Wants to be A CRM Millionaire?” The game is displayed on PowerPoint and is modeled after the game show that used to air on ABC. The professor even programmed the graphics and audio to look and sound just like the ones taken from the show. At the end of the game when the class won the million dollar question, someone sarcastically asked if she was going to give us a million dollars. She then reached underneath the desk, held up a bag of candy bars, and asked “would you all settle for 100 Grand?” We spontaneously laughed and applauded.

 

This past weekend was graduation for the students in the Executive MBA program. An email went out to the entire school on Saturday announcing that the students in the graduating class had picked two professors to receive this year’s distinguished teaching award. One of the two professors is someone who left Kenan-Flagler to work on Wall Street only to come back and become one of the more popular professors in the department. The other is …. tsk …. how should I put this politely … one of the least liked professor in the school. I am not sure how the heck she was voted to receive the distinguished teaching award. Upon reading the email, my first instinct was to hit “reply to all” and ask “is there a different (name of professor) who teaches the Executive MBA program?” but my better sense of judgment prevailed. I am guessing that either the older students in the Executive MBA program find her style to be more appealing or that this distinguished teaching award isa bit like tenure, that if you stay at Kenan-Flagler long enough, you will get one.