Teaching
At NYU Stern, there are a range of courses for graduate and undergraduate students to help them find their purpose and flourish in their careers.
Graduate Courses
Becoming You
Professor Suzy Welch
Offered in the full-time MBA, part-time MBA, and Executive MBA programs, “Becoming You” makes extensive use of exercises, activities, psychometric testing, research, and lectures to teach a transformational methodology that guides students through the profound, exhilarating, and sometimes surprising journey of discovery to their authentic purpose, a life and career rich with meaning. In short, “Becoming You” is designed to help students uncover the best, most thoughtful answer to the often elusive question, “What should I do with my life?”
Developing Managerial Skills
Professor Suzy Welch
Developing Managerial Skills covers the wide, exciting, and occasionally daunting gamut of activities comprising the art, science and sheer discipline of management, covering topics including hiring, culture-building, making hard decisions, and navigating crises. Ultimately, the goal of DMS is to introduce the principles that allow burgeoning managers to understand their role(s) in the organization, along with the effective blocking-and-tackling practices that will allow them to unleash that knowledge for the good of their teams and organizations.
Developing Managerial Skills Syllabus
Inclusive Leadership
Professors Linda Basch & Anne Weisberg
In today's rapidly changing global economy, companies with the best talent are at a competitive advantage and inclusive leadership skills are increasingly at a premium. This course will provide students with the skills and strategies to be inclusive leaders: to recognize their own agency to interrupt implicit bias, develop and support allies of diverse backgrounds, address microaggressions, and to leverage the talent on their teams to achieve business outcomes. Students will be able to utilize the lessons of the course in their own career decisions as well as when managing, being managed by, or collaborating with others. The course is highly interactive so that students can learn from each other as well as guest speakers such as the former CEO of Jamba Juice and author of Anti-Racist Leadership, the head of multicultural marketing at Johnson & Johnson, the Chief Impact Officer at Advantage Capital, and the Vice-Chairman of global capital markets at Morgan Stanley.
Leadership Fellows
Recent Professors: Mor Armony, Jessy Hsieh, Hannah Levinson, Jason Ortiz, Timothy Ortiz, Paula Steisel
Becoming a better leader is not a passive process. Adults learn far more through experience -- through acting and reflecting -- than they learn from the advice of others. As such, the Leadership Fellows curriculum is heavily focused on practice. Fellows will practice working through difficult workplace scenarios with professional role players, be given the opportunity to reflect on their behavior, and provide / receive feedback from their cohort members. Further, they will be afforded the opportunity to test their learning by repeating the experience. The purpose of this practice is to position students as leaders within their organizations after Stern. By practicing and experiencing the emotions and rushing thoughts that arise under pressure, students will rise to the occasion, carry themselves with greater confidence and purpose, and be seen as people who are seasoned beyond their years.
Professional Responsibility
Recent Professors: Mark Brennan, Bruce Buchanan, Jeanne Calderon, Mira Dewji, Gary Fraser, Tyson-Lord Gray, April Gu, Rachel Kowal, Christopher Michaelson, Victor Mullins, Maria Patterson, Matthew Statler, Hans Taparia, Alison Taylor, Batia Wiesenfeld, Karla Williams
This course is designed to inspire you with a positive vision of what business can be, a realistic vision of what it often is, and a roadmap for how to navigate through the hazards and opportunities you will face in your career. Specifically: 1) You will learn about the types of traps that lure business professionals into ethical lapses and criminal behaviors. 2) You will learn enough moral psychology to understand how well-intentioned professionals can get lured into such traps. 3) You will learn conceptual frameworks that help you to navigate ethical gray zones with more confidence and better results. 4) You will learn what characterizes companies with positive ethical values, and why you are better off working for them, or creating them. 5) You may, if you choose, commit yourself to a standard of professional conduct that will help to make your work more fulfilling and honorable.
Work, Wisdom, and Happiness
Professor Jonathan Haidt
This is a course on positive psychology adapted to the needs of students in NYU-Stern’s MBA program. We’ll draw on ancient wisdom and modern psychology to find the best ideas and practices for making students stronger, smarter, more sociable, and therefore happier in the confusing, fast-changing, and often isolating world of post-pandemic work. The first four weeks are focused on self-improvement. The last two are about group dynamics and leadership. Once you know something about positive psychology and your own happiness, what kind of workplace would you design, and what kind of leader would you be, to help others flourish?
Work, Wisdom, and Happiness Syllabus
Undergraduate Courses
Flourishing
Professor Jonathan Haidt
People are like plants: if you get the conditions right, they will usually flourish. So what are those conditions, and why are so many members of Gen Z (born 1996 and later) failing to flourish? We will look at research in social and positive psychology on happiness, virtue, self-change, and personal growth. We will also look at ancient wisdom––insights into mind and heart passed down to us from many cultures because they work. The goal of this course is to help you understand the conditions that lead to flourishing, and then to develop specific habits that will help you to thrive at NYU, at work, and in your personal relationships
Personal Responsibility and Leadership
Recent Professors: Kenneth Bigel, Mark Brennan, Bruce Buchanan, Parisa Elahi, Tyson-Lord Gray, April Gu, Barbara Holt, Rachel Kowal, Shelly London, Roger Machlis, Carol Newell, Maria Patterson, Joseph Salvo, Matthew Statler, Chavon Sutton, Robert Wosnitzer
Professional Responsibility and Leadership is an interdisciplinary capstone course that builds on prior coursework within the Social Impact Core curriculum as well as other course work both within Stern and other NYU colleges. In this discussion seminar, students have the opportunity to pursue the following learning objectives: 1) become more familiar with the variety of ethical dilemmas that can arise in the course of business practice; 2) understand the different values and principles that can inform and guide decisions in such ambiguous situations; and 3) gain experience articulating and defending courses of action that are coherent with their own values. Various activities are designed and facilitated to allow students to engage in reflective dialogue with each other, the overarching themes of which include the relationship between business and society on a global, national and local basis; the foundations of personal and professional business ethics; and the exercise of leadership in organizations.