Wharton Marketing Professor Peter Fader is a veteran teacher in Wharton’s EMBA program. With such experience, we asked him to share his thoughts on what makes EMBA students unique, how he feels about teaching in the program, as well as what new opportunities he has in store for them in the coming year.
“I love to teach the students in Wharton’s EMBA program. What sets EMBA students apart from other students? The answer is their natural curiosity. EMBA students ask questions like, ‘Where can I read more about this stuff?’ Their sincere curiosity makes you feel that your choice of career as an educator is worthwhile.
“EMBA students aren’t just here because they want an MBA and can’t take two years off from their jobs. They also look forward to the intensive interaction that the program provides and choose to be part of this community. There is no doubt that our EMBA students are the tightest knit group out of any degree program here. They bond naturally, and it happens right from the beginning.
“I am often asked how I feel about our faculty flying to San Francisco every other week to teach Wharton West students. I tell people that it seems to be such a popular choice for faculty that it is sometimes hard to get those teaching slots. I haven’t actually had the chance to go out there myself yet!
“However, even if I’m not teaching at Wharton West this year, I still plan to be spending a lot of time there in the near future. As co-director of the recently launched Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI), I plan to make regular pilgrimages out West in order to take full advantage of all the exciting things happening in Silicon Valley and the rest of the West Coast. We hope that WIMI will be seen as the authoritative thought leader for issues related to interactive media and its impact on broader business issues. We are taking the massive amounts of data that companies struggle to make sense of and translating it into business strategies and real-world applications.
“WIMI will have huge opportunities for EMBA students on both coasts. In addition to developing new courses – which hopefully will provide a new elective offering for EMBA students in the near future – there also will be plenty of new projects for students interested in the analysis of this data and the digital media world.”
Thanks Prof. Fader for the overview. We’ll stay tuned for more news from WIMI!