Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/57469
Qualified to Teach by Mark D. Hanna and J. Lowell Mooney I s the best business school professor the one who publishes a specific number of articles every year in the top peer-reviewed journals? Or should other factors influence whether someone is considered qualified to teach business? For any business school, choosing and evaluating faculty is a critical task, but there is no magic formula to help administrators achieve the perfect mix. Each accredited school follows a different mission and creates its own formula to hire faculty who suit its individual needs. But no matter how varied their missions are, accredited business schools all must meet AACSB International standards, which outline requirements for aca- demically qualified (AQ) and professionally qualified (PQ) faculty. With these require- ments as a guide, schools evaluate faculty as they're hired, to make sure they're right for the job—and a few years down the road, to make sure they've maintained their qualifications. Often, research productivity is all that administrators consider To judge academic qualifications of faculty, business schools often resort to counting the number of articles they've published. But is there a better way? when determining maintenance of AQ status for their faculty. That's a straightforward way to define faculty status, which otherwise can be a tricky job. If they focus on research output, faculty committees don't have to define policies in ways that could render colleagues "not qual- ified." By the same token, administrators have a clear definition of what constitutes qualified faculty; they don't have to make judgment calls, and they can't show biases for or against certain professors. But while measuring research output can make it easier to weigh faculty contributions, we don't believe it's the best way for a school to assemble—and keep—the most talented faculty on staff. 34 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008