 Management
Professor Bruce Gates likes to wander the halls of the Atkinson
Graduate School of Management and conduct what he calls, “Geek
Checks.” It is his way of getting better acquainted with students
and doing the management school equivalent of talking shop. “I
just like to see what they’re working on and see if they need
any help. Maybe tell a joke. I want them to consider me a peer.”
As a graduate student, Gates’ interests were caught between
sending rockets into space and teaching – he chose teaching.
“NASA set up its nationwide fellowship program to teach people
about managing large scientific endeavors. I’d always planned
on working in industry or for NASA, but I got an opportunity to
teach in my last year of graduate school and I loved it.”
 As
one of the Atkinson School’s original faculty, Gates has done
more than anyone to pioneer innovation within the management school.
In the early 1980s, before PC use was widespread, Gates convinced
the school to invest in computerized projection systems. “I
probably used technology here earlier than anyone else. I was convinced
that the graphical capability of the computer would help me do things
much faster and more accurately.”
He also wrote and developed his own statistical analysis software
program called “1,2,3 Forecast,” to take advantage of
Atkinson’s digitally enhanced classrooms. Soon he was being
flooded with inquiries about the software. For the next 10 years,
he sold the program out of a spare bedroom to clients worldwide.
While the operation eventually closed, Gates says working with the
clients who used his software has hugely benefited his teaching.
“I learned more about how managers use numbers and statistics
in that exercise than I would have if I’d been employed some
place for 30 years.”
His feelings about technology mirror his general philosophy about
learning. “I tell my students that we often do a lot of things
that substitute for learning. We underline books in eight different
colors. We struggle to take all of these notes. We do all sorts
of things that we are convinced contribute to our learning, but
they don’t.”
The key to learning, says Gates, is immersing yourself in what
you are doing. At the end of each semester, he requires his students
to find and solve a real world problem. His students not only have
to conduct an intelligent study, they must communicate their results
in a way that would be understandable to a manager, “Someone
who can use the material,” says Gates.
And if the next great management idea is out there, you can bet
Gates will be prowling the halls of Atkinson looking for it. “That’s
what I’ve spent my life doing: trying to figure out how you
take ideas that are pretty simple and apply them to situations that
aren’t so simple. I tell my students, maybe if I have another
35 years, I’ll have it all figured out.”
|
