We can now vote for our best professors for core subjects and electives on the Intranet.
I’m curious as to how the voting system works. Hypothetically, if there are two outstanding core subject professors, one in Fonty and one in Singapore, and most students on both campuses vote for them, isn’t it more likely that the one in Fonty will win because there are more students there?
Unless, of course, that professor taught most of us in P3. This is quite possible for the July promotion, as P3 in Fonty is in the dead cold of winter and so many Fontysiders tend to move to the Singapore campus. Hence, I think an outstanding professor who taught most of us in P3 stands the best chance of winning the best core subject.
As such, my pick for best Core subject professor is Ilian Mihov for Macroeconomics, and I think he may stand a pretty good chance of winning once again. My next bet is Michael Witt for International Political Analysis.
I think our P1 Microeconomics professor, Brett Saraniti, also rocked, and it’s great that he is returning to teach at INSEAD. Even though I wasn’t interested in a career in Finance, I liked both our Finance professors, Pierre Hillion and Theo Vermaelen, who were entertaining in their own ways. I liked our Organisational Behaviour classes and how, even after they came to an end, we could still talk to our professors (Alan Filipowicz) and Henrik Bresman about real life situations.
For electives, I thought most professors were not bad, but as I have to pick one, I would choose the one that gave me skills I could use for the rest of my life, and who was also kind enough to follow up with me, beyond the classroom. So Horacio Falcao it is.
An indication of a professor’s popularity is the number of sections his electives have been alloted, the minimum number of bid points required and finally, the length of the waiting list. Positive word of mouth from students who’ve taken those electives will encourage the new intake to sign up as well. In some cases, you can also view the evaluation scores given to the professor by previous cohorts.
The last two months I’ve had amazing opportunities to bond closer with my Electives professors and even other professors who haven’t taught me before! Firstly, at the end of P4 I went on the Building Business in India trip and got to know Patrick Turner better (another professor with strong word of mouth recommendations and many rounds of electives!). I will definitely keep in touch with him when I return to Singapore. Then I had 2 dinners at the home of Lourdes Casanova and Soumitra Dutta, the author of ‘Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom’. I met up with him again to discuss a tech project. And, inspired by playing piano at their place, with their encouragement, I am now performing at the Cabaret.
At church, I chatted with INSEAD Dean Frank Brown and his wife and was impressed with his humility and his ‘frank’ sense of humour. Then we met Chan Kim and overshot our appointed time listening to the advice he was giving us, beyond Blue Ocean strategy. It was enlightening and I hope we will indeed meet again when he visits Singapore.
So it seems that my INSEAD experience is ending on a crescendo. But hopefully this will only be the first movement of the symphony of my life.
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