End of Week Update from Dean Slaughter
December 11, 2020
Dear Students,
The Upper Valley’s first meaningful snow of the season this week signaled, as it often does, the end of our fall studies. For you T’21s, December mini-electives wrap up next week. And for you T’22s, with just a few more days you will have succeeded in navigating both Fall A and Fall B. To all of you students: congratulations on your accomplishments this term!
Our welcome winter break starts next week. And yet, the learning that lies at the heart of your Tuck education is ideally becoming more of a lifelong endeavor for every one of you. Great leaders are great teachers, and great teachers are great lifelong learners. Time and again at Tuck, we encounter this value of lifelong learning.
In his View from the Top talk last week, Weijian Shan attributed his career success to two attributes: grit, and learning. As CEO and Chairman of PAG Group, Shan shared, he has been a voracious reader – all to better understand the world’s investment opportunities. Part of this appetite came from his youth, much of which fell during the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution that included years of no schooling for Chinese children. Indeed, in explaining PAG’s thesis of investing in Chinese consumers, Shan invoked from our winter-term core course Global Economics for Managers several key concepts including the components of aggregate demand, the open-economy investment-savings identity, and interest-rate parity. If Professors Blanchard and Chor need a substitute in teaching GEM to the T’22s this winter, Shan may be the one!
In advance of DivCo this fall, Fay Wells T’06 shared a reflection on Tuck360 about how she learned to find her voice at Tuck, in part by speaking up in class. “I became much more comfortable sharing my perspective and influencing, particularly in situations that required tough, candid conversations.” The practice paid off later in her career when she noticed diverse employees weren’t being included in a conversation about talent acquisition. “I shared my perspective, highlighted the missed opportunity, and underscored the cultural, economic, and candidly political implications of continuing with the current approach. It illuminated an organizational blind spot and required some strategic shifting.”
And just last week, T’07s Andrew Smith and Bob Hall – the CEO/founder and COO of Outrider – were profiled in a Forbes piece, “Meet the Startup That Has Raised $118 Million to Automate Critical Distribution Yards.” Hall says that he is continually drawing on and applying lessons he learned from Professor Sansing’s elective course, Managerial Accounting. “The financial and non-financial cost of all the behaviors of the company are something I think about every hour of every day.”
Our Tuck curriculum asks a lot of you. It does so in the aspiration of preparing you for a lifetime of learning and thus of impact. It is remarkable how often I hear our alumni like Fay, Andrew, and Bob reflect on how their ongoing learning hearkens back to the rigor and relevance of their Tuck classes. Our Tuck Alumni Lifelong Learning program offers a number of ways our alumni can continue to experience all the practical knowledge and wisdom Tuck has to offer.
But before you become Tuck alums, first comes finishing your fall studies in the next few days. Every best wish with that, and a good weekend to all.
Dartmouth has formed a high-level task force to plan for and manage possible disruptions related to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, monitor federal and state recommendations, implement guidance, and communicate with our community.