Outstanding Business Professor Named

Outstanding Business Professor Named

BY DANA DURBIN
Rice News Staff
May 27, 1999

Teaching is not a talent that David Ikenberry was endowed with. Rather, the
associate professor at Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management said
that it is something he has learned over time.

"I’m not the ‘natural athlete,’ so to speak," Ikenberry said.

He feels that now he is an effective teacher, and his past students agree,
having selected him as the 1999 recipient of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School
of Management Excellence in Teaching Award.

The award winner is selected by students who graduated two and five years ago.

Ikenberry considers the award to be "quite flattering."

"It suggests that the courses students took from me were compelling or
moving in some way and that they were something that has stayed with them even
after graduation," he said.

A member of the Jones School faculty since 1990, Ikenberry teaches fundamental
courses in finance as well as investment-related courses.

Three years ago he helped develop a course through which students manage a
small equity portfolio. The student-run M.A. Wright investment fund is essentially
an in-house mutual fund. The goal is for the fund to match the performance of
the S&P 500, Ikenberry said, adding that once it becomes large enough, it
will be used to award scholarships to Jones School students.

"It’s a wonderful experience for students," he said of the class,
which he taught for two years. "It’s a different kind of experience–a
hands-on, pragmatic experience."

Ikenberry has been on sabbatical since last summer at the University of Washington
in Seattle, Wash., where he has been conducting research on stock repurchases,
focusing on why corporations repurchase stocks. He will return to Rice within
the next two months.