Admired business professor to leave University
Amid protests from his students, Tzachi Zach, assistant professor of accounting in the Olin Business School, will be leaving Washington University after being denied the chance to pursue a tenured position.
Zach, last year’s winner of the Reid Teaching Award, has gained high praise as both an accessible and diligent teacher. He has taught at the University for six years.
“I absolutely think the University made a mistake, and we’re letting one of our most respected and coveted teachers go,” Yoni Dina, a sophomore accounting major and a teaching assistant for Zach, said.
Mahendra Gupta, dean of the business school, said that the decision to refuse tenure to Zach resulted from his lack of completed research.
“Zach is a very good researcher. However, he has not been able to produce, which is unfortunate,” Gupta said. “The University must continue to adhere to the principal of continual quality across each and every dimension.”
Gupta added that faculty members recruited to work at the University are expected to attain tenure during their careers.
“When a faculty member does not get promoted, it is a major loss to the school,” Gupta said. “It is very painful when we have to let go of that investment.”
“If I were making the decision, I think I may have cut him a little more slack personally,” Glenn MacDonald, professor of economics and strategy and the former associate dean of the business school, said of Zach. “I’m not saying we made a mistake. I’m saying I can see both sides of the argument.”
MacDonald highlighted Zach’s demeanor and popularity as possible reasons why he may have deserved to stay at Olin.
“He’s a wonderful guy, a dedicated teacher, and there’s a good reason why students think he’s terrific, and I wish he was successful in every dimension of his job,” MacDonald said. “[Zach is] one of the best-liked and appreciated people in the school.”
MacDonald, who has known Zach since he was a graduate student at the University of Rochester, said that the decision not to offer Zach a promotion was debated.
“It’s fair to say there was a lot of variety of opinion. It boiled down to how you think about option value,” MacDonald said.
Zach, as with all business school tenure candidates, underwent an extensive review process in which faculty and external experts in his field evaluated his research, teaching and service to the University over the last six years.
From that review, the faculty decided whether Zach should be granted tenure, given another three years to produce scholarship or be asked to leave. Then, a recommendation was submitted to the dean, who made the final decision on Zach’s tenure trajectory.
While the value assigned to each component of a professor’s job-teaching, research and service to the school-remains confidential, students worry that in Zach’s case, the University placed undue emphasis on research and ignored his teaching abilities.
“Students care more about the teaching than the research, and the University needs to keep that in mind,” Dina said.
MacDonald, however, emphasized that the University is a research institution whose continued success relies on “producing knowledge.”
“Students don’t understand the role that research plays in teaching and the importance of scholarship in their education,” he said. “They’re going to have trouble understanding that, unless they understand the importance of ideas in their undergraduate education.”
Sophomore Zach Richter, another teaching assistant for Zach, said the professor had the ability to “take accounting, which is kind of a boring subject, and make it very interesting and fun.”
Zach, who will move to teach accounting at Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business in the fall, said he was surprised by the dean’s decision and could not comment as to whether it was fair.
“Fair is a relative term, so it’s kind of hard to tell, at least to me,” he said.
Zach said that he looks forward to his future at Ohio State, where he hopes to develop a class on accounting policy and research.
“They have a great accounting department and strong undergraduate and graduate accounting programs,” Zach said. “It’s a great place to teach.”
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