The Stanford Business Reporter

DK & JP) One major change at the GSB over the last decade has been the quantity of resources that the GSB devotes to case development. In the early 90s, relatively few cases were written at the GSB, and faculty tended to write or supervise cases on their own with little institutional support. However, in the middle 1990s, the GSB began to devote significant resources to case development, and our current budget for case development is now over $1 million per year (excluding the costs of faculty time). This increase in resources was prompted by the belief within the Dean’s Office that the GSB should try to make it as easy as possible for faculty to develop cases that will facilitate their teaching objectives. This increase in resources has been accompanied by the institutionalization of some formal standards for what constitutes an official Stanford case.

Probably the least institutionalized part of the process is the first step--the step where an interested student comes into contact with a faculty member who wants a case written. We are not entirely sure what you mean when you say that students have tried "unsuccessfully to write cases with professors at the GSB", but we suspect that you mean that they have had difficulty finding a professor who is interested in a case that they wish to write.

In some instances, a student will propose a particular case to faculty member, and the faculty member will see some benefit of that case for his or her course; in other instances, a faculty member may ask one or more students if they would be interested in writing a particular case. In general, faculty tend to not be interested in writing or supervising cases that will not be taught in class. Moreover, in general, the Senior Associate Dean in charge of case-writing--in this case, Podolny--generally does not want to provide financial resources for cases that will be written and then sit on a shelf. So, Podolny may ask the faculty member if he or she believes that there is a reasonably probability that the case will be used for a class. (This is obviously more of an issue when the student desires financial compensation rather than course credit.)

From the faculty member’s point of view, he or she has the option of relying on students or on full time case-writers that have been hired by the GSB. The actual choice will depend on a faculty member’s personal preferences and on the faculty member’s ability and desire to schedule the case into the schedule of a full-time case writer.

When a faculty member and student are deciding on whether they will work on a particular case, one of the issues that should be decided up front is whether the case will be written for course credit--as part of a 390, for example--or whether the case will be written for formal compensation and/or tuition reimbursement. A student cannot receive both course credit and compensation. If the student wishes to receive course credit, then the number of units of credit is obviously contingent on the time that the case takes. If the student wishes to receive compensation, then there is a relatively standard hourly rate. The student is paid the hourly rate over the duration of the case when he or she turns in time sheets.

If the student wishes to receive tuition reimbursement, then there is some minimum amount of hours that the student must devote to the case. (We don’t know the number off the top of our heads, and as we are close to deadline, we can’t get it, but we believe it is about 100 hours; however, the actual number is available from the case writing office.) Before the student can receive the tuition reimbursement, there are a series of requirements that the case must meet in order for the case to be considered completed. These include conformity to template guidelines for a Stanford case as well as obtaining a signed case release form from the company and/or individual that is the subject of the case. Finally, the professor must agree that the case meets his or her standards before tuition reimbursement is provided.

As perhaps is obvious, sometimes the case writing process does not turn out as well as one would like. Sometimes a company grows reluctant about providing access. Sometimes the interest of the faculty member or the student starts to dwindle as the casework goes on. Sometimes the case is not as interesting or relevant as initially suspected by the faculty member and student.

However, the number of cases written at the GSB has generally been increasing. Last year, over 80 cases were completed, and this is a huge increase over the number written in the middle 1990s. If a student is interested in finding out even more about the details of the case writing process, we would suggest that they check the case writing office’s home webpage: wesley.stanford.edu/casewriting.

DK & JP) New elective courses almost always arise at the instructor’s initiative. Prof. X announces that he or she thinks a course in A or B would be fun and interesting, and we say, "Go ahead and try." The Deans’ Office has the authority to put any new course on the schedule for one year, if the Deans think the course is worthwhile; to be added to the list of "permanent courses" for a second and subsequent year takes a vote of the faculty. (Courses are removed from the list of permanent courses if they are untaught two years in a row, unless the faculty votes to retain them on the books.) Both for new courses and old, cases are found and the course structure constructed by the faculty member involved. Individual faculty members take the initiative in researching and writing cases; the school provides support for such activities, and students with ideas for writing cases can approach faculty members, but as with the design of courses, case writing is a faculty-led activity. (See answers to question 1 for more details.)

Things aren’t much different in the core, except that it takes a vote of the entire faculty to make major changes in what goes on in a given core course or on the list of core courses, the number of units they carry, and so forth. So, for instance, when the HR people wanted to try offering a mix of 2 and 4-unit versions of the HR core course; this took an authorizing vote of the entire faculty.

These courses are evaluated in the same way we evaluate any course: (a) How large an audience do they draw? (b) How do students respond? (c) How do peers (other faculty members) evaluate the content of the course? (d) Does the course (and efforts to develop it) result in high-quality transferable materials? (e) Does the course serve research or pedagogical needs less directly? (For instance, we are happy to continue to offer low-drawing electives that generate course materials for other courses, that are especially innovative, that help build the human capital of the faculty members involved, and/or that help support the research programs of the faculty members involved.)

It may be more than you want to know, but we would like to add: At the GSB, we take teaching very seriously. We are, we believe, the only unit at Stanford University that will grant tenure to faculty members who are outstanding teachers and (simply) adequate researchers (where our standards of adequacy are very, very high). In annual reviews of faculty, leading to salary raises, we spend a lot of time on the individual’s teaching program. But in all this, we define teaching more broadly than how the person performs in the classroom. We have a formal statement of our criteria for evaluating teaching that includes (a) classroom performance, (b) development of transferable materials (textbooks, cases, exercises, teaching notes), (c) innovation in pedagogical methods and the design of new courses, and (d) individual supervision of students. The point for current purposes is that we put a lot of weight on the development of successful courses, and Profs. Foster and Kramer, to take the two examples you mentioned, are heroes in our books for this sort of activity, which (we believe) is a major contributor to the quality of our academic program.

DK & JP) A bit of historical perspective is necessary to frame our answer. The use of video sections, in McDonald’s course, in Parker’s Corp Fin section from the Fall, and in other (limited) instances, is something new to the school. We believe that McDonald’s video section from Fall 2000 was the first of these. We aren’t altogether happy with this---we believe as a matter of core philosophy that the quality of education that we offer is hugely enhanced by "in-class" interactions---but we, along with most of our peers, are trying to experiment with electronically mediated instruction. And we recognize, in the case of McDonald’s course or Parker’s, that there is demand that would go unsatisfied if we don’t "bend" a bit in this fashion. Happily, for us and even more, we believe, for you, Profs. McDonald and Parker have been willing to extend their teaching reach with these sections. (To be careful here, there have been requests to instructors of other oversubscribed courses for video sections, which have been turned down. Some instructors believe that their course is relatively more compromised in quality by this sort of medium, and decline to participate, just as some instructors believe that the number of students they can handle in a manner that matches their aspirations for the course is limited. When an instructor makes this determination, we support their judgment, and we hope you understand that video sections are not the answer to all instances of over-subscription.)

But for current purposes, the important point is that this sort of thing is very new, and often is done "on the fly." As these things are done, decisions about how to handle silver bullets and the like must be taken quickly, and it is only with the benefit of hindsight and experience that we learn all the consequences of policies that are set. As we move ahead, we may find that decisions taken at an earlier time were not ideal, or fully and utterly equitable. (Since your question was a general one, we are not going to go into the specifics of the current controversy, which would lengthen this answer considerably. In particular, nothing we say here should be taken as a judgment on the equity of current arrangements for McDonald’s courses.) We may run up against complications that we hadn’t anticipated. And then the question is, How should we adapt?

We think that there are two important principles that should govern adaptation, as we experiment and make "on the fly decisions."

1. If a policy is announced, and if students make choices in anticipation of that policy being followed, the policy should be followed. This is so even if we decide, later, that the policy as originally promulgated is not as equitable as it might have been. These things aren’t formal contracts (well, the University Counsel might take exception to our saying that), but they come close, and we should stick by statements we make. (b) Sitting at our desks in, say, October, deciding how to handle silver bullets for things like video sections, involves a lot of assumptions and guesses about the value of video sections, the number of students who will be affected, and so forth. Neither of us has had the pleasure of sitting through, for instance, Prof. McDonald’s course, and we weren’t sure how it would translate onto a video screen. The natural person to consult with is the person most expert on the course, namely Prof. McDonald. We know him to be someone who is tremendously concerned with the educational experience he provides, and we trust him as someone who will give us his best (and clearly best informed) guess as to how to structure "silver bullet policy" and the like for his course. Add to that the fact that he is going out of his way to satisfy unmet demand for his course, and we are even more inclined to follow his opinions about how to deal with this novel situation. So yes, he gets a voice---a very strong and nearly decisive voice---in this sort of "on the fly" policy-making. We think he earned it. And we hope that student will recognize that even if decisions made earlier might have been made in a fashion that is ultimately more equitable, Prof. McDonald, and Prof. Parker, deserve your support and thanks for going the extra mile to meet demand.

As this sort of thing becomes more commonplace, if indeed it does, experience will guide us on what are the most equitable arrangements to make. As this becomes more commonplace, if indeed it does, we’ll fit "silver bullet" policy about it into the general policy more uniformly. But, we hope that student concerns with the equity of this situation don’t lead to a situation where faculty, on the basis of experiences they or others have, decline to go the extra mile, in order to avoid after-the-fact squabbling and Monday-morning quarterbacking.