Six professors at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business have been recognized with the Wells Fargo Award for Excellence in Course Materials for teaching cases they developed to prepare students to make decisions in the face of uncertainty.
Cases, which describe real-life business challenges, show students how all business functions fit together and help them hone their ability to take effective action. In class, professors engage students in a Socratic-style discussion of how to tackle the issues that case materials present. The case method is a hallmark of the Darden experience and is considered the gold standard of management education.
This year’s award winners are Professors Marian Moore, Erika Hayes James, Susan Chaplinsky, Pedro Matos, Rich Evans, and Yiorgos Allayannis.
Both Moore and James received the Wells Fargo Award for High-Impact Case.
The Research and Course Development Committee at Darden, which presented the awards, recognized Moore’s case “Positioning: The Essence of Marketing Strategy.” The case provides readers with a tool to develop a positioning statement in order to reach their target market.
The committee recognized James’s case “Decision-Making and Leading through Crisis,” which she co-wrote with Darden researcher Gerry Yemen. The case offers students a perspective on making decisions during times of crisis.
Susan Chaplinsky received the Wells Fargo Award for Distinguished Case Writer for the impact her case-writing contributions have made over her tenure. Chaplinsky, the Tipton R. Snavely professor of business administration at Darden, last year received the All-University Teaching Award, and in 2012 she received the Wachovia Award for Excellence in Teaching Materials—Innovative Case.
Matos, Evans, and Allayannis received the Wells Fargo Award for Case Series for the cases “Gold as a Portfolio Diversifier: The World Gold Council and Investing in Gold,” “The Market for Gold: SPDR Gold Shares and Beyond,” and “Betting on Gold Using a Futures-Based Gold ETF.” This series focuses on the performance of gold as an investment asset in the wake of the market collapse of 2008 and in the macroeconomic uncertainty of fall 2012. It challenges students to examine whether gold would have provided capital preservation and improved the overall risk-return tradeoff of a portfolio or whether it was an asset class at the peak of a bubble.
The Wells Fargo Award for Excellence in Course Materials is intended to encourage the development of world-class educational materials that reflect well on Darden’s educational mission.
The members of the Research and Course Development Committee are Raj Venkatesan, committee chairperson and Bank of America research associate professor of Business Administration; Professor S. Venkataraman, senior associate dean for faculty and research; Sean Carr, director of intellectual capital for the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Steve Momper, director of Darden Business Publishing; Professor Saras Sarasvathy, Isadore Horween research chair of business administration; and Professors Rich Evans and Scott Snell.
In 1982, Wachovia, which merged with and is now part of Wells Fargo, established an endowment to fund research and case development awards at Darden. The Wells Fargo Awards alternate each year between recognition of course materials and honoring faculty for their outstanding research and publications.