Peter Schott and Heather Tookes Receive Yale SOM Alumni Association Teaching Awards

The winners of the 2010 Yale School of Management Alumni Association Annual Teaching Awards were announced at a town hall meeting on April 22. Each year two professors are recognized based on a vote by the student body. One award is for teaching in the Yale SOM core curriculum and one is for elective teaching.

Dean Sharon Oster presented the awards. In her introductory remarks, she noted that it was appropriate that faculty be recognized for teaching, given the amount of time, effort, and creative energy they put into perfecting their craft. She also gave the students credit for good judgment based on their selections this year. "The award winners this year are spectacular," she said. 

Peter K. Schott, a professor of economics, received the award for teaching in the core. An expert in how firms and workers respond to globalization, Schott developed a new core course this year called the Global Macroeconomy. The course is one of the nine Organizational Perspectives that form the heart of Yale SOM’s distinctive integrated curriculum. Schott said he was initially concerned at the prospect of creating a new core course from scratch, but was ultimately gratified by how much students learned.

Heather E. Tookes, an associate professor of finance, received the award for elective teaching. Tookes taught Corporate Finance, a course which builds on the fundamental concepts introduced in the MBA core courses by focusing on financial management from the perspective of inside the corporation or operating entity. She expressed appreciation for how hard students in her course worked and said it was a pleasure to teach them. "This is really a great honor, especially with all the great teachers here at Yale SOM," she said.