Hillel J. Einhorn, Emory Williams teaching awards

John Huizinga, the Walter David “Bud” Fackler Distinguished Service Professor of Finance; Kevin Rock, Clinical Professor of Finance; and Haresh Sapra, Associate Professor of Accounting, have each won teaching awards for 2009 from Chicago Booth.

Huizinga received two awards for his course in the Executive M.B.A. Program. Graduating students at the Singapore and London campuses voted separately to give him the Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Award. Students in the Executive M.B.A. Program on the Chicago campus selected Rock as another Hillel J. Einhorn Award winner.

Sapra received the Emory Williams Award for Teaching Excellence from students in the full-time, evening and weekend M.B.A. programs. This is the fourth time he has received the award.

The Hillel J. Einhorn Award is given to a faculty member who selects interesting and important material, makes the class sessions interesting and engaging, and manages the class effectively and fairly.

The Emory Williams Award recognizes accessibility to students, and enthusiasm and innovation in teaching.

Huizinga teaches macroeconomics, a course that provides an overview of the interaction of economic variables such as Gross Domestic Product, inflation, interest rates, budget deficits, the exchange rate and the money supply.

Huizinga was first drawn to macroeconomics after observing how the economy exerts a powerful influence on people’s lives. Prior to joining the Chicago Booth faculty in 1980, he taught at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. He also has taught at Stanford Business School. From 1993 to 2004, Huizinga served as the Deputy Dean for the Faculty at Chicago Booth.

A combination of the negotiation experience from the deputy dean position and being in the right place at the right time led him to become the agent of NBA star Yao Ming.

“Receiving the Einhorn award from the Executive M.B.A. Program students in London and Singapore is quite an honor,” Huizinga said. “The ability of these students to manage their career, their family life and the academic obligations our program demands is truly impressive. It is a pleasure to teach students who are so interested in macroeconomics and so committed to learning.”

Rock teaches courses in corporate finance and financial management. He is currently working on a paper about initial public offerings and alternative public offerings.

Before joining the Chicago Booth faculty, Rock taught at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., where he was named teacher of the year three times. Prior to that he worked in the Financial Institutions Group at Citibank, and taught corporate finance at Harvard Business School and Wharton.

Rock received his Ph.D. from Chicago Booth, where he was a student of Hillel Einhorn, after whom the award is named.

Sapra, who previously won the Emory Williams Award in 2003, 2004 and 2005, teaches an M.B.A. elective course on mergers and acquisitions and corporate restructuring issues. He also teaches a Ph.D. course on analytical accounting research.

In 2005, Sapra won the Ernest R. Wish Accounting Research Award for his paper, “Do Mandatory Hedge Disclosures Discourage or Encourage Excessive Speculation?”
“Receiving the Emory Williams Award is a great honor because it is based on student nominations, and students can choose from any of our outstanding faculty,” Sapra said.

“Over the years, I have made my M.B.A. course much more challenging and demanding, and my students have always risen to the occasion. This makes receiving the award this year even more gratifying,” Sapra said.