Rutgers Business School Professor Emeritus Philip Shaak, the founding director of the Rutgers Executive MBA program, was honored on April 4 during an EMBA luncheon at Rutgers Business School.
Shaak, who once served as an associate dean, said he looks back at EMBA as the most exciting period of his career. “I really liked teaching and that was the most exciting teaching time for me,” he said. “I was extremely fortunate in my career.”
Rutgers current EMBA director, professor Farrokh Langdana, said that he and Assistant Dean Kathleen Connelly Harmon were “honored to be part of (Shaak’s) legacy to RBS.”
“Kathleen and I have often told Professor Shaak that the Rutgers Executive MBA Program has been able to garner all of its global rankings because it was built on the shoulders of giants, such as Phil Shaak and his team,” Langdana said.
During the event, Professor Shaak took some time to talk about EMBA’s early days, the program’s growth and his time at RBS. He described the beginning of the program in 1987, when a tremendous marketing effort was required, and compared it to the ease of attracting candidates today, based on the success and high rankings the program has achieved, as well as the quality of the faculty and teaching. Shaak emphasized that he and his team were able to attract very bright, professional students who were coming back to school after many years of substantive professional experience, and that created a collaborative learning environment for the program. According the Shaak, “One of the key parts of EMBA is it’s not simply a sterile academic exercise. There’s a blending of the academic world with the real world of business. That blending is what makes the program so successful.”
