By: Victoria Estic, ESSEC student.
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Diversity is highly valued in ESSEC’s Global MBA major in Hospitality Management (IMHI), and this quality is reflected not just in its orientation and its student body, but also in the composition of its teaching staff. As befits one of the leading schools producing graduates for the global hospitality sector, ESSEC’s hospitality faculty not only have widely different educational and professional backgrounds but also hail from every corner of the globe. Here we take a look at four really great teachers that truly represent the spirit of the IMHI program.
The first is of course Professor Peter
O’Connor, Academic Director of the program and the one who teaches both the
Business Computing and the eCommerce courses.
Coming from Ireland, Peter has a deep connection with the hospitality
sector. While he holds a PhD from Margaret University College in Edinburgh and
has authored both textbooks and countless articles, his true value is his
expertise on using electronic channels of distribution in hospitality, as well as
on how technology can be used to enhance operational effectiveness in hotels.
Peter is greatly appreciated amongst his students. He is not only passionate
about his subject but can communicate and pass this onto his students in only
one class! A talented speaker, he is a strong believer in “action learning” and
“learning by doing”. While difficult,
and often frustrating, for some, by forcing participants to think for
themselves, experiment and find creative solutions, this quickly produces
deeper learning that traditional methods. “Instead of immediately revealing the
‘right’ solution, by trying over and over people finally succeed and understand
much better what they’ve done”. Perhaps
the best reflection of this approach is the high level of technology literacy
amongst graduates of the program, a competency much appreciated by
employers.
A second teacher who has had an enormous
influence of generations of IMHI students is Professor Robert E. Kastner,
nicknamed Bob, who comes from America and teaches Financial Accounting. After
completing his studies, Bob taught at Cornell on the faculty of the School of
Hotel Administration. He is widely known as a lecturer and producer of
management development programs for the global hospitality sector. He has had a
long association with leading international hospitality management companies,
and also works with Robert M. Chase & Associates to deliver executive
education programs using two management simulations, the Cornell Hotel and
Restaurant Administration Simulation Exercise.
Bob’s highly dynamic nature, enthusiasm, and ethic nature represent well
his American genes. Bob is an excellent teacher who pushes students to work
hard and excel at what they are doing, with the result that, during their
careers, graduates think back about Bob’s financial accounting classes &
methods. His key battle cry is “cash-flow”!
Everything invariably has to do with “cash-flow”, the lifeblood that
makes a company run well. Behind his
serious manner, Bob is a very nice and funny teacher. Students will never forget Bob and his
countless hilarious ties! He is a truly
passionate teacher who definitely doesn’t leave students indifferent.
Adding further to the international dimension
is Revenue Management specialist Dr. Sunmee Choi from South Korea. Another Cornell graduate, she teaches courses
on quantitative analysis and decision modeling, particularly applied to the
Revenue management area. Before joining the academic world, she worked in several
interesting industry positions, including Director of Hotel Revenue Management
at priceline.com, as well as in operations for companies such as Hyatt, Hampton
Inns, and Sheraton. Sunmee is an amazing teacher who clearly knows her highly
technical subject inside-out. She is passionate about research and provides
students unique academic articles to read and analyze. Rather the simply
teaching classes, she encourages students to dig deeply into research and
innovation. Her way of teaching, which
is very methodical and thus very different from Professor O’Connor’s more
unstructured approach, represents well her South-Korean roots and thus
confronts students with the perfect opportunity to learn about different ways
of working. Despite her highly quantitative
discipline, Sunmee is at heart very soft as well as genuine and as a result the
students love her.
And last but not least we have global
traveller, Dr. Stefan Groschl, an ESSEC faculty member specialized in Human
Resources Management, educated in the UK, based in France but originally from
Germany and now living in Panama! Stefan is Co-Chair of the ESSEC Leadership
and Diversity Chair and Member of the Faculty of Management at ESSEC Business
School. A graduate of Oxford Brookes University, Stefan has both worked in the
hotel industry and taught in academic positions in England and Canada before
joining ESSEC. He is a regular panelist and speaker at academic conferences and
industry events all over the world as well as delivering courses at numerous
academic institutions in Mexico, Taiwan, Spain, New Zealand, Germany and
Bahrain – a truly international profile. Stefan is an excellent teacher and
even though his subject – Human Resources – was not necessarily the one that
students were initially the most excited about, he consistency manages to make
it as one of the students’ favorite classes. Indeed, one of his classes
“Managing Oneself and Leading Others” goes much further than just teaching
basic human resources management. It enables students to work and reflect on
their own personal growth. Stefan also succeeds in prove to students that Human
Resources is at the center of success in most companies, but particularly in
the people oriented hospitality sector. His rigor, as well as his proximity to
students, are greatly appreciated, and his ability to help people understand
that hospitality is above all a people business adds an important dimension to
the IMHI experience.
Thus, from Ireland, to America, to South Korea
and Germany, and many destinations in between, almost the entire globe is
covered by the ESSEC faculty. To that we add the students, who typically come
from nearly twenty different countries, the orientation which focuses on the
global hotels sector and it all adds up to a truly international
experience. Such a variety of intertwined
cultures presents students with a unique opportunity from which to adapt and
learn, and in fact experience what most of us actually experience when we’re
hired in different positions in global companies in different parts of the
world. ESSEC’s Global MBA major in Hospitality Management – offering a truly
international education to help prepare you for a truly international career!
