Those of us engaged in teaching and scholarship generally shrink from thinking about our avocations in industrial terms. While colleges and schools may be said to “produce” graduates, the process of doing so is a highly interactive one that resists automation and standardization. In fact, producing graduates who are prepared to cope with rapidly shifting contexts is a less a process than a mission.

At Stern, we don’t aim merely to endow our students with the ability to negotiate spreadsheets and cash-flow statements. Rather, we have long been concerned with preparing our students to negotiate the conflicts and challenges they’ll face over the course of their careers. We strive to prepare students so they can think ethically, historically, and critically.

Amid the scandals and excesses of the last several years, fingers have occasionally been pointed at business schools. Shouldn’t they be doing more to instill a sense of ethics in their students? Yes they should. For thirty years, Stern has offered as part of the required core a course on business ethics and professional responsibility. And we’ve been producing our own case study textbook on the topic for the past ten years. Professor Bruce Buchanan leads our robust markets, ethics and law program. Working with colleagues in other disciplines, NYU Stern professors have been crucial contributors to NYU’s Center for Law and Business, which has taken a leadership role in educating directors of public corporations under Bill Allen’s guidance. The lively symposium summarized in this issue is drawn from one of its events.

Assembling scores of directors and recruiting speakers such as Paul Volcker, Felix Rohatyn, and Richard Fuld is only possible, of course, because we’re in New York. And our presence in the city that is both the world’s financial and cultural capital allows us to offer our students a plethora of enrichment opportunities that go far beyond the traditional bounds of an MBA program. In this issue of STERNbusiness, Professor David Liebeskind describes the history of local company Steinway, which students in his management consulting class have been using as a case study. And Vice Dean of MBA Programs and professor of management Richard Freedman recounts our highly successful and innovative interaction with the Metropolitan Opera. These stand as just two examples of how we strive to integrate the broadest possible range of disciplines into the Stern experience.

We hope you enjoy this production of STERNbusiness.

Thomas F. Cooley
Dean