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 Teck Ho from the Haas School of Business at the University of California (UC) Berkeley.
Winner of UC-Berkeley’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010 as well as the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching (an annual award determined by students) for the full-time MBA program in 2004, 2005, and 2006, Teck H. Ho (“Pricing” and “Experimental Economics”) is the William Halford Jr. Family Chair in Marketing at Haas. With the school since 2002, Ho also serves as director of the Asia Business Center and chair of the Haas Marketing Group. A second-year student with whom mbaMission spoke liked that Ho “takes complex ideas and makes them easier to understand.” In addition, mbaMission learned that Ho’s “Pricing” class—part case and lecture format, part group presentation—has long been one of the most popular electives on campus, often a “sell-out.” Students taking the course quickly learn to bring $1 bills with them to class—Ho often requires students to chip in money to participate in course games, and after matching the amount out of his own pocket, he gives the money to the game’s winning team.
Group projects in Ho’s course can focus on a range of products and projects, from something as large as a BART station to as small as a half-day pass at a nearby ski resort. In a You Tube video on the pricing program, Ho calls his courses “hands-on and practical,” noting that companies bring their pricing problems to class, where the students then act as “mini consultants” to assist in solving real-life issues. Ho described his teaching philosophy in an April 2010 post on The Berkeley Blog by saying, “My vision is to have students leave the class with the ability to think strategically about pricing and with the practical tools they need for their future careers” (read the entire post). Noting how dynamic Ho’s classes are, one second year praised, “An hour-and-a-half class feels like it takes 30 minutes!” Ho even has a Facebook fan page, and a second year commented on the professor’s sense of humor the Berkeley MBA Students Blog, saying, “Like many other Haas professors, Teck Ho could easily get a job at Comedy Central.”
For more information on the defining characteristics of the MBA program at UC-Berkeley Haas or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.