Higher education has a positive feedback loop: professors empower students; those empowered students evolve into leaders and doers; and then those alumni pay it forward by empowering their old professors, who begin the process anew by empowering more students.
That noble loop was on display Friday, Oct. 19, when the Eli Broad College of Business honored a half-dozen endowed faculty members at an investiture ceremony at the Wharton Center. Also honored were the alumni and friends of Broad College who endowed those positions.
From left to right: Senior Associate Dean and Eli Broad Legacy Fellow of Management Robert Wiseman; Carl Borchgrevink, the John and Becky Duffey Faculty Fellow in Hospitality Business; Tobias Schoenherr, the John Hoagland-Richard Metzler Professor in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management; Allan Sherwin, the Dr. Lewis J. and Mrs. Ruth E. Minor Chef-Professor of Culinary Management; Srinivas (Sri) Talluri, the John Hoagland-Richard Metzler Professor in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management; Tomas Hult, the John W. Byington Endowed Chair in International Marketing; and Sanjay Gupta, the Eli & Edythe L. Broad Dean. Photo by Kasra Raffi
“It’s a very special way for us to be able to recognize both the students that we had who went on to be successful in their lives and who believed in what we’re doing and then committed to give back to us, as well as all of the work that we have been doing collectively,” said Sanjay Gupta, Eli & Edythe L. Broad Dean of the college.
One of those donors is Richard Metzler (BA operations management ’63), who helped establish endowed professorships in his name and that of his advising professor, John H. Hoagland.
“The relationships you’ve built with the students coming through are really going to be valuable over the rest of your academic careers. You have the capacity to impress people, to make impressions, to change their lives,” Metzler said, asking today’s professors to think about “what you might want to have in your name, or how you might want to be remembered 20 (or) 25 years from now.”
The honorees were:
- Andreas Hoffrichter, the Edward A. Burkhardt Professor in Railway Management. Hoffrichter is the director of the Center for Railway Research and Education in the Broad College. The professorship is named for a leading rail executive, and was established with the help of Dennis Gilstad, who at the time of the establishment was chairperson and CEO of FCM Rail.
- Tobias Schoenherr, the John Hoagland-Richard Metzler Professor in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management. Schoenherr is internationally renowned for his work on sourcing and buyer-supplier relationships.
- Srinivas (Sri) Talluri, the John Hoagland-Richard Metzler Professor in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management. Senior Associate Dean and Eli Broad Legacy Fellow Robert Wiseman called him “an academic dynamo” for his nearly 90 journal publications and more than 8,000 citations of his work.
- Carl Borchgrevink, the John and Becky Duffey Faculty Fellow in Hospitality Business. Borchgrevink is the director of the School of Hospitality Business. John Duffey is the retired president and CEO of Six Flags Entertainment.
Also recognized for reappointments to their named endowed positions were:
- Tomas Hult, the John W. Byington Endowed Chair in International Marketing. Hult is director of both the International Business Center and the Academy of International Business at the Broad College.
- Allan Sherwin, the Dr. Lewis J. and Mrs. Ruth E. Minor Chef-Professor of Culinary Management. His affiliation with MSU goes back to 1964, when he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in hotel, restaurant, and institutional management from the Honors College.
