Edward Snyder
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
13th December 2023 at 5PM
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR DAMIEN MCLOUGHLIN, UCD College of Business on 13th December 2023, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on EDWARD A SNYDER
Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Prof. Edward A. Snyder is the globally preeminent leader of business education of the past 25 years. An economist who currently serves as the William S. Beinecke Professor of Economics and Management at Yale School of Management, Ted completed his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago studying under and writing with Nobel economists such as Milton Friedman and Gary Becker.
During his Phd programme, his thesis advisor called him out as a future Dean and Ted did not disappoint. Doing what no other business school dean has done in leading three of the great global business schools, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and until 2019 Yale School of Management. Dean Snyder has played no small part in creating the prosperity the world has enjoyed over the past decades and sown the seeds to solve many of the seemingly intractable problems of the world.
Prosperity is created and problems are solved by managers. Managers of business, government, public institutions and what we sometimes call NGO’s. In each of these entities the greatest return on investment is to the manager, never to technology. The onus on business schools is to select degree candidates with the qualities needed by future managers, develop transformative curricula that are focussed on important problems and then place graduates with the firms of the future.
One problem of management is that you invest in these ideas today but can’t be sure for some time if you go it right. Importantly, management schools have a constituency which is powerful and vocal. Business School Deans respond to students, alumni but also the wider business community who are never slow to let you know how relevant you are. As a Dean Ted has secured a significant vote of confidence from the business community, securing close on three quarters of a billion dollars in gifts and endowment enhancements to support his vision, including the largest ever donation to a business school the US$300m naming gift from David Booth to the University of Chicago in 2008. Ted also knows how to leverage greater resources, as the now Booth School of Business moved up the rankings to number one business school in the world and stayed there for eight years.
Thinking and then acting on what the future of management looks like is clearly Ted’s special topic. Dean Snyder’s time at Yale School of Management saw him invest in three elements of the future. First, that management is interdisciplinary and can and should call on the strengths of the university in preparing future managers. This coming semester thousands of Yale students from business, divinity, law, medicine and public health will cross the campus and take courses in other disciplines as they develop and deepen their expertise. Second, Ted redefined the mission of the school as the education of leaders for business and society with students who care deeply about the problems afflicting the world being the ones selected.
Globalisation was the third part of Dean Snyder’s vision and the one that saw UCD College of Business and Yale School of Management became partners. Ted set out to create a unique business school network, focussed on a truly global experience for students but low on bureaucracy and cost and with a membership of the most interesting schools in the world. In 2012 UCD were founding members, along with Yale and 17 other schools, of the Global Network for Advanced Management, or GNAM. Over the past ten years, hundreds of UCD students have taken part in GNAM network weeks and Short Online Network Courses, or SNOCS, at the now more than 30 business schools of GNAM in Europe, the America’s, Asia and Africa. A similar number have taken courses at UCD. In the academic year 2022/23 UCD faculty including Professors, Tom Conlon, Paul Dylan-Ennis and Julie Schiro will offer courses in Aviation Finance, Blockchain and Web3, Digital Business, The Future of Food and Changemakers in Global Food and Agribusiness.
Taking these investments in interdisciplinarity, school focus and student selection and globalisation, Ted has helped create a future ready, socially aware and economically relevant cohort of managers not just for the United States but for the world. As we struggle with the challenges of geopolitics, fractured globalisation and sustainability we can be confident that we have a body of people ready to tackle those challenges in the best interests of global society.
Ted you are undoubtedly Dean of Deans. Today UCD honours you for your work in creating the future of management and for the collegiality you have shown to us over the past decade. Good luck and God’s speed to you and Jenny as you make your next contribution.