The Academy
Plato would hold court in a grove of trees (presumably for shade) on a hillside outside Athens. Based on the name given the place by its owners, it became known as the Academy. Since those days, the word has been used for a vast array of institutions of learning and/or sport and it has always carried with it a sense that these are loftier pursuits that improve the mind and body and elevate mankind in the long forward march of evolution. When one is not speaking of a specific school that bears the word academy in its title, the word academy or the mythical place thought of as “the academy” is generally a reference to the faculty of higher learning that gather in colleges and universities to imbue great wisdom on the younger generations so that mankind can advance itself by accumulating more and more knowledge and strive to move the ball forward on the understanding of our world and our souls that might stretch beyond this world. Sounds like both a spooky and wonderful place all at once.
Last night I finally gathered with a part of the academy of my peers at University of San Diego and its Knauss School of Business. It’s the end of the semester and the woman who chairs the Management section of the faculty (I guess defined to cover the “softer” courses in leadership, law, policy and ethics) invited all the faculty in her domain (both full-time and part-time, tenured and adjunct) to a cocktail reception which served as a general end-of-semester party and a going-away party for a long-time professor of the practice. We met at 4:30pm on the terrace of the University’s main dining room (La Gran Terraza) and were each given a little blue drink ticket and told to go into the bar and rejoin outdoors where a small buffet of nibbles were arranged. Everyone seemed to be drinking wine, so when I asked for a Diet Coke, the bartender ripped the little blue ticket in half and returned the other half to me and said that I was allowed two soft drinks if I wanted. With that auspicious start of the festivities I wandered back out on the terrace to introduce myself to my peers.
I have been teaching at USD now for three years, ever since i came out here to retire. It is not the nearest institution of higher learning with a business school to where I live, but it certainly is the best ranked. USD is a post-WWII institution that came up from a Catholic nunnery to a nationally ranked university set on a ridge overlooking the best parts of San Diego and its Bays. I have heard that it has been deemed by some unknown authority as the prettiest campus in America. It certainly qualifies for being in contention for that accolade since its Spanish Mission-like architecture and hillside setting make it a very pretty spot. In fact, I think that it very nicely fits the image of being the local equivalent of Plato’s grove of trees minus the shade, since the San Diego sun seems always to shine brightly on that hilltop.
When I decided to move out here I sent emails to the various Universities in the county with my CV, highlighting my 10-year tenure as a Clinical Professor of Finance and Investments at at the Johnson Graduate School of Management of COrnell University. I have enough NY-centric ego to think that in the arena of high finance, a pedigree from Wall Street combined with a proven teaching track-record from an Ivy League business school, not to mention the vaunted title of Clinical Professor, should put me in demand in the San Diego Academy. The folks at USD seemed to think so, but the nearer institutions of UCSD and Cal State San Marcos, as public institutions, appeared to view my email as an attempt to subvert the egalitarian job-posting system, so I was merely referred to the URL and welcomed to get in line with all the other candidates for such consideration. I tried not to take offense and laugh this off, but I was still glad that USD was free and interested in pursuing me to teach and join their faculty.
It was the beginning of COVID and yet I managed to get one lunch meeting with the new Dean of the school (also at La Gran Terraza). That was enough to get my foot in the door and I went on the roster. I assumed they would give me a title commensurate with my Clinical Professor title, since I noted others who carried that title. But that didn’t happen and as a retired guy who has been a Clinical Professor and a CEO, Chairman, President, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Managing Partner, I concluded that titles were irrelevant to me and that I should not give it another thought. Let’s see how it would go.
I was connected to the new Chair of the Finance Department, a fairly minor part of the school since pure finance is not really their thing at USD. In fact, I assumed that lack of gravitas in that arena might inure to my benefit given my pedigree. The new Chair is an Associate Professor, proving once again that in Academia, a Department Chairmanship is not really all that special or prized a position, but more a rotational assignment that one must do sooner or later. The Chair looked over my course roster from Cornell and thought that a course on project finance might be useful, so I put one together and gave it via Zoom as we all hunkered down with the Pandemic. In fact, it wasn’t until my second year on the faculty that I even set foot on campus after my initial Dean’s lunch.
I was asked that second year to teach Advanced Corporate Finance, which was a required course for a finance concentration in the MBA program. I dug in an put a great curriculum together. I am so bold as to call it great because the student course evaluations gave it an almost perfect score, so it must have been great. I was immediately signed up to teach it agin the following year. Meanwhile, my name was finally thrown into the ring to teach an ethics course, which had been a long-held desire of mine. At this point, after three years of being part of the USD faculty, I have taught the Advanced Corporate Finance course twice and the Law, Policy & Ethics course (a general MBA requirement) three times, most recently this very semester which just ended.
I was hoping to use this restart of my teaching career as a way to expand my friendships in San Diego and to join a like-minded academic community out here. COVID derailed those plans right way and then my schedule, which has had me teaching from 7pm to 10pm weekdays did the rest of the job of keeping me largely disconnected form anyone that wasn’t a student in my class. I have literally met no more than one or two fellow members of the academy out here because its like I teach night school and everyone else has already gone home. Even the other faculty gatherings didn’t work, since I chose not to go unless I knew at least one person through email communications (like one of my two Depart Chairs). Perhaps the academy out here doesn’t like hanging around the grove of trees as much as Plato did.
So, I was please to finally meet a few other members of at least the Management faculty, if not the Finance or broader business faculties. I was one of only a few men, since that arena seems more dominated by women. It was an odd assortment of ex-military and long-since retired professionals who have taught mostly much longer than I have (meaning 13 years). Many of them teach as adjuncts at several of the schools, including the ones that sent my to the job posting board. They almost seemed like day laborers hanging out at the academic version of Home Depot. But I guess that is what I seem like to them as well. As the group thinned after an hour, I reached into my pocket and found that blue half ticket stub and wondered if I could handle a second Diet Coke. I opted out and headed home, figuring that I would save it to party with the Academy another day.