Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school to attend, but the educational experience is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Steven Rogers from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Students with whom mbaMission spoke were enthusiastic about Steven Rogers (“Entrepreneurial Finance”), who seems to embody a kind of split personality: although he is known for his easygoing style and wonderful sense of humor, he will also, we were told, “scare the crap out of you with a cold call.” Because Rogers is quite committed to cold-calling students (picking a student to pepper with questions to lead off a case discussion), students in his classes are always quite well prepared, because none of them wants to founder publically. Rogers is an experienced entrepreneur and thus brings both academic and practical perspectives to class. Lest any reader wonder why a professor who is known for scaring students deserves to be written about so favorably, we should note that Rogers has twice won the student-selected Lavengood Award for Outstanding Professor of the Year (1996, 2005). Moreover, in 2009, Ebony magazine named Rogers one of the top 150 influential people in America.
For more information about Kellogg and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.