Professor Mark Broadie

How long have you been at Columbia, and what do you teach now?

I’ve been at Columbia forever (since 1983).  I currently teach Derivatives, Quantitative Finance and Computing for Business Research. 

As a professor, what's one thing you would like to see changed or needs improvement in our curriculum?

The main improvement I’d like to see is in the area of integration.  Business problems aren’t limited to one functional area and they can’t be tackled with one idea or solution method.   Our teaching needs to show more how the different pieces fit together.

The Vice Dean of Teaching is a new position at Columbia Business School. Do you have any specific goals or targeted issues you’d like to address in your new role?

Besides integration, I’d like to work on ways to improve teaching quality.  I’d also like to see our elective offerings rationalized and provide more guidance to students regarding elective courses.

What’s one thing you think CBS students don’t know about their professors, but should?

Most professors work very hard at course preparation and teaching.  Just as students have to balance coursework and outside activities, the faculty must balance the demands of teaching, research and administrative duties.

What do you like most about teaching at CBS?  What do you like the least?

The best part of teaching is interacting with students: learning from their questions and getting to know them as interesting, and in many cases, amazing people.  Giving grades is about the worst part of teaching.

Grab Bag: What was the best day of your life?

That’s a tough one.  It’s a toss-up between the two days my children were born and the day Dean Hubbard asked me to take on the Vice Dean of Teaching position.