Faculty Legends Retire
Darden Professors Bob Conroy, Ed Hess, Alec Horniman and Elliott Weiss retired from teaching full-time at the end of the 2020–21 academic year. These familiar faces helped shape the School, expanded its curriculum and reach, and made it more globally focused — all while carrying forward Darden’s tradition of teaching excellence and student centricity.
BOB CONROY
ELLIOTT WEISS
ALEC HORNIMAN
J. Harvey Wilkinson Jr. Professor of Business Administration Finance
Oliver Wight Professor of Business Administration Technology and Operations Management
Killgallon Ohio Art Professor of Business Administration Leadership and Organizational Behavior
When Professor Bob Conroy was weighing a job offer from Darden more than three decades ago, he was struck by the unity of purpose among the faculty and staff, the sense that everyone was on the same page. “Everyone I talked to knew what the School was trying to do. There was a sense that this was a place where you could come and be involved in something bigger than you,” said Conroy. “Everyone wanted to create a transformational experience for the students.” Conroy, who retired from full-time teaching at the end of the academic year, joined the Darden faculty as a professor in the Finance area in 1988. In addition to leading generations of students from all backgrounds through the finer points of valuation and capital management, he helped shape the direction of the School through multiple stints leading the Full-Time MBA program as associate dean. His record of accomplishment in leadership roles included establishing exchange programs and global programs as international studies coordinator, bringing key elements of coursework and materials online for the first time, and helping to establish the Executive MBA program in the mid-2000s. After news of Conroy’s final class was posted on social media, thanks and congratulations poured in from colleagues and former students. A general theme: Students remembered a professor who cared about their progress and met them where they were to help them get to where they needed to be.
Much of Darden Professor Elliott Weiss’ professional life has been devoted to process improvement — how to eliminate wasted effort and optimize processes. After working with Darden students of all ages and stripes on Lean and related processimprovement topics for more than three decades, Weiss retired from full-time teaching at the end of the academic year. After growing up in the Philadelphia area and teaching at Cornell, teaching the case method at Darden shifted how he viewed his role, realizing that he was “teaching people, not stuff.” “The hardest part of the case method is figuring out the correct question to ask so that the students can develop the necessary skills for determining solutions and recommendations for themselves,” said Weiss. Operations management and inventory control can be nebulous concepts for MBA students without backgrounds in the space. Throughout his career, Weiss sought ways to drive home key operations strategies in relatable ways — the inventory of milk in a refrigerator or the optimal way to feed a baby at night, for instance. Indeed, Weiss’ voluminous case output spans fields and topics, with examples including tying a problem-solving process to weight loss, using a comic about rabbits to teach service systems and the lessons a cult fast food chain could teach about lean transformation, among many others.
Few faculty members are as associated with the Darden School as Professor Alec Horniman. Horniman came to Darden in 1967, part of a formidable class of new hires that included Professors John Colley and Bill Sihler. Horniman came at the behest of Dean Charles Abbott, who asked if he could come down from Harvard and teach courses in the Learning and Organizational Behavior area. Horniman would stay for more than 50 years, becoming instrumental in elevating the Darden MBA, a leader in the Executive MBA and an architect of The Executive Program, among other indelible marks. A master of multiple subjects, Horniman taught ethics, strategy, leadership, health care, psychology and various combinations thereof, and frequently carried a double-load of classes. Horniman was the first director of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics, helped introduce classes such as “Business Ethics and Managerial Decision-Making,” and introduced an ethics module into the First Year curriculum. A giant among Darden professors, Horniman’s legacy lives on in the thousands of students he transformed into ethical, lifelong learners across the world. As one high-profile Darden graduate wrote in a letter testifying to Horniman’s impact: “Alec highlighted, for those willing to hear the message, that our connection with humanity is what makes the difference. “His wisdom is timeless and universal.”
10
THE DARDEN REPORT
