UVA Darden’s Acclaimed Teaching Faculty Is Winning Plaudits
Ranked among the leading business schools in the U.S., Darden Business School’s MBA program is considered to be one of the best in the country. The business school, which is associated with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, is also home to some of the finest professors in the country.
Princeton Review ranked UVA Darden No. 1 for the best professors in the country in 2019, an honor which Darden has bagged for 3 years in a row. Another publication, Poets & Quants, named Darden professor Lalin Anik as the MBA Professor of The Year in their newly published rankings.
Anik joined UVA Darden ahead of the 2015-16 academic year, and has since gone on to become one of the most respected and beloved professors at the business school.
Lalin Anik’s story so far
An Assistant Professor in the Marketing academic area, Anik has established herself as one of the most sought after professors at Darden. Her teaching effectiveness score on student evaluations also comes in at a staggering 4.99 on a five-point scale. Talking about Anik, Dean Scott Beardsley says:
The students admire, both her willingness to have courageous conversations on difficult topics, but also her willingness to think big. And beyond that, she also just brings a lot of joy everywhere she goes.
A native of Istanbul, Turkey, Anik moved to the U.S. aged 17 for her undergraduate studies in 2002. By 2004 she knew she would be dedicating her life to teaching, and worked as a research lab assistant for a marketing professor at the London Business School. With a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) – the equivalent of a PhD – in Marketing from Harvard Business School, Lalin moved to Duke Fuqua as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Hindsight.
Achievements
Ever since joining UVA Darden, Anik has won a number of plaudits, including being named in Poets & Quants’ list of Best 40 Under 40 Professors in 2019, a year which saw 2463 nominations, as compared to 800 in the previous year. Anik has been nominated for the Outstanding Faculty Award at UVA Darden numerous times, while winning the Faculty Diversity Award in 2017 and 2019. Anik has also conducted groundbreaking research in a number of topics, including decision-making within the context of romantic relationships, as well as how people derive feelings of fulfilment and what that might mean for philanthropy.
Teaching Philosophy
Describing her philosophy on teaching, Anik says:
“I try to teach my students that marketing is about empathy. It’s about empathy with your customer and the same is true of teaching. It’s not only about you. It’s about the other people in the room. How can you contribute to their learning and their experience? How can you make their life better? So it is always shifting your focus from yourself to others.”
Beyond her professional commitments, Anik also doubles up as an adviser, informal confidant and occasionally a teammate on basketball and football teams at Darden.
Dean Scott Beadsley recalls her first day in class at UVA Darden:
“She knew every nuance of the case study that would be taught that day like the back of her hand. She had memorized the names, faces, and backgrounds of each student in the class.“
As for her students’ opinion, Alexander Gregorio, who is earning both an MBA and a law degree at the University of Virginia, says:
“I think what makes Lalin so special is her ability to connect with you, not just as a professor to pupil but as a person to person. You’re not feeling like you’re talking to someone who’s a subject matter expert, and she is. You’re talking with someone who wants to learn from you as much as you want to learn from her.”
UVA Darden’s Acclaimed Faculty
However, Lalin Anik isn’t the only professor at UVA Darden to win plaudits for their teaching. Poets & Quants’ 2019 and 2018 lists of Best 40 Under 40 Professors also featured Luca Cian and Peter Belmi, both assistant professors of Business Administration at the business school.
Anik, Cian and Belmi follow in the footsteps of fellow UVA Darden faculty, Greg Fairchild, who’s been previously named in Poets & Quants’ list of the ‘World’s Best B-School Professors’, while also being named as the Professor of The Year in 2017 by the same publication. An Isidore Horween Research Associate Professor of Business Administration, Fairchild has been at UVA Darden for 19 years now. Known for his specialization in emerging domestic markets, and applying big business principles to areas which are generally considered high-risk, Fairchild is considered one of the most influential professors at UVA Darden.