Yesterday, I was involved in a program for talented youth in which we were introducing the children to business concepts.  I had great help from four fellow faculty, from two current students, and from two alumni of the business school. One of the students led a session in the morning about what life as a business school student was like.  One of the parents asked about a path to success.  The student gave a great answer--although one that I doubt most parents of kids in a gifted and talented program would like to hear--"There is not one path.  There are as many paths as t ..read more

Recently, the Chinese economy and its growth have been in the news a lot.  One thing that caught my attention was the statement that the rate of growth in the Chinese economy had slowed more than was expected.  I found that interesting because my mind immediately went from the statement to thinking about third derivatives.  Why, you ask?  In part because even after all these years, I remain a math geek.  More importantly, because the way I teach, I am always interested in ways to figure out whether people understand the concepts rather than just are capable of remember ..read more

This morning, I had the opportunity to attend a breakfast that was hosted by the United Way and sponsored by a central Maryland for profit organization (so that the money did not need to come from United Way donations). I was able to invite guests, and I chose to invite two.  The first is someone with whom I run who is a third year law student at another local university in whose professional success I have taken an interest while I have gotten to know her over 3+ years of marathon training.  The second is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School who continues to look fo ..read more

I am on a committee at the University level that is looking at issues of faculty mentoring.  It is interesting to me that most faculty think of mentoring only as research mentoring.  I think of mentoring as "life mentoring."  If a person can help me improve my research, great.  But when I think of a mentor, I am really looking for someone who can help me think through decisions.  These could include decisions about: My career How to figure out how life and career fit together How to focus my activities or have them remain diffuse How to think about research, teaching ..read more

There was just an article in the Wall Street Journal (http://www.wsj.com/articles/poor-contact-lens-hygiene-puts-users-at-risk-of-serious-infections-1441648413) that provided a list of poor hygiene practices for contact lens wearers, talked about the proportion of contact lens wearers that take these risky behaviors, and discussed the possible impacts of these poor hygiene practices. The numbers are notable.  According to the article there are over 40 million contact lens wearers in the United States.  And, according to a CDC survey, ninety-nine percent of contact lens wearers repo ..read more

The ongoing issue of how public health officials should be trying to minimize overweight and obesity in the United States brings us once again to the issue of sugar-sweetened sodas. A piece in the Wall Street Journal shows how things are playing out in San Antonio and several other places around the country. The soda industry claims it is being singled out.  The soda industry counters that it has made large donations to programs in cities that encourage exercise and seek to improve public health. The key question is whether this is a good business decision and whether it is a good busi ..read more

A very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today discussed the increase in payouts for vaccine related injuries.  This is interesting for a number of reasons: (1) The claims are paid from a no fault system (2) The system was designed to avoid discouraging companies from making vaccines and individuals from getting vaccines (3) The increase in payouts has been for injuries related to the administration of the vaccines It seems like the risk that this was supposed to deal with was a risk faced by the manufacturers of their vaccines.  If what was in the vaccine caused harm ..read more

So, I have held my position of Vice Dean for Education at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School for a little over two years now.  Today, I felt for the very first time, that I fully "owned" the position.  I think it is worth thinking about what it means and why it took me so long. Today was the first day for the fourth cohort of the dual degree program in which students get an MBA from the Carey Business School and the MA in design thinking program at the Maryland Institute College of the Arts.  We call it the MAMBA program.  That is MA and MBA together.  As a busin ..read more

Sometimes, it is hard to remember that not everyone comes to the table with the same information, the same background, and the same ideas of cause and effect or automatically draws the same conclusions when presented with the same data.  Today, I had a fun example of that at the grocery store.  But it made me think—what are the assumptions that I have, what are the assumptions others bring to a discussion, and if I miss or fail to anticipate the differences what could be the impact. As it is Father’s Day, I have three things that happen almost every Father’s Day: I run the 5K that ..read more

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting a member of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Immunology for the first time.  He came to visit me in my office at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and was impressed by the view from the 12th floor of the building in which we rent space in the Harbor East area of the city.  He was visiting from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  While we had been colleagues (in much different departments) for 7+ years in public health before I changed schools, we had never met.  It actually turned out that our comm ..read more