B-school deans aren't rock stars, at least not in the conventional sense, but you wouldn't know it looking at one hot video on the Web. In an unlikely confluence of humor, economic policy, and pop music, a video produced by students at the Columbia Business School lampooning Dean R. Glenn Hubbard's alleged disappointment over losing out on the Fed Chairman's job has turned up on a lot of Web playlists. It's even amused its target, students say.
The video, a satire of the song
Every Breath You Take by The Police, depicts a dejected Hubbard expressing his disappointment over the selection of Ben Bernanke for the Fed post. (
See the video here.) The lyrics, which were written by a group of Columbia students for the school's annual "Follies," make light of Hubbard's criticisms of Bernanke's economic policy:
Every breath you take, Every change of rate,
Jobs you don't create, While we still stagflate,
I'll be watching you.
Every single day, Bernanke takes my pay,
When growth goes away, inflation will stay,
And I'll be watching you.
Oh can't you see, the Fed's where I should be,
How my poor heart aches, at each mistake you make.
Much to the surprise of the students involved, the video quickly earned the attention of the mainstream media. CNBC played the segment on
Power Lunch and interviewed several of the students who made it.
The New York Times gave it a nod on its Web site. "At last count, it had been viewed on [popular video downloading Web site] YouTube.com over 300,000 times," says Michael O'Rorke, a second-year student at Columbia, who shot and edited the video and played the lead role of Hubbard.
So, what did the dean think of the video? Hubbard took it all in stride. When the video premiered at the biannual "Follies" event, participants report Hubbard was sitting in the front row laughing with the rest of the crowd. He may not have gotten the job, but students say his sense of humor remains intact.
Tennis, Everyone?In his business ethics course at the
Rice University, Professor Doug Schuler teaches a case on sex discrimination, where a man wins a promotion over an equally qualified woman because he plays sports with the boss. For the first time this spring, Schuler did something to address what he describes as a common inequality. He created a noncredit tennis course for female students only, in partnership with the school's National Association of Women MBAs (NAWMBA) chapter.
Thirty women -- about one-third of all the women in the school and roughly 85% of all the members of Rice's NAWMBA chapter -- signed up for the eight-session course, "NAWMBA Tennis Program: Success Through Sport."
"The purpose of the course is to encourage women to participate more in sport, open opportunities for them, and also let them see how much talent they have," says Schuler. "To some extent, you don't know until you try."
The course was open to participants of any tennis-skill level, from professionals to those who had never even picked up a racket. And it was taught by a formidable group, including Schuler and Elizabeth Schmidt. She is the current assistant women's tennis coach at Rice and a former Women's Tennis Assn. (WTA) professional tour player and college all-American at UCLA.
Because of the course, tennis is getting lots of attention on campus. A larger number of Rice students -- men and women -- are playing tennis, getting in shape, and networking all at the same time. Students are organizing informal tennis tournaments, and there always seems to be a group of women on the school courts, says Trisha Eggelston, a second-year student and president of the Rice NAWMBA chapter.