Leadership

January 2012

Dear Stern Community,

The beginning of a new semester and calendar year offers opportunities for renewal and reinvigoration. As we restart our individual and collective journeys, let us redouble our efforts to avail ourselves of the abundance of possibilities in the months ahead.

Back in August, I challenged our newest MBA students to contemplate their stories—to consider the great problems facing the world, to raise their ambitions about their potential for impact, and to think broadly about how to create value for business and society. In turn, we promised to deliver an educational experience that empowers them to turn problems into opportunities, one that imparts 21st century skills for 21st century careers, that develops leaders prepared to shape the future of business.

And while we launched the next chapter of the Stern Story during three days of summer, the aspirations of “Launch” transcend any one moment in time and any particular class. In short, we promise to all of our students an environment, a community, and a culture we describe as “An Education in Possible.”

An Education in Possible starts with the realization that imagination is the only constraint to achievement, that opportunity sits alongside every problem, and that our ability to transform those problems into opportunities requires both rigor inside the classroom and engagement beyond its four walls.

We see An Education in Possible in action when Stern MBA students and faculty come together to solve real problems in real time by building a business plan with Paul Romer for the Charter City of Honduras, or by working with Arun Sundararajan on the socioeconomic impact of a unique ID for India’s 1.2 billion citizens. Our undergraduates expressed it through their publication of 10 essays grounded in business-based solutions to confront society’s most pressing problems—healthcare, energy, transportation and the environment. It comes to life when 40 professors from different departments unite to publish three books in three years on repairing the global financial system, or when Stern became the proud home of three Nobel Laureates in Economics. An Education in Possible explains how a business school that began with a local community near Wall Street in 1900 now extends its reach globally with over 100,000 alumni in over 100 countries a century later.

Simply put, this phrase symbolizes our relentless pursuit of unparalleled excellence. The word “possible” punctuates the belief that tomorrow will be better than today because of our collective potential and the will to fulfill it. As we continue on the next leg of our journey, I encourage you to seize the opportunity for transformation. We take great pride in our culture and will begin to signal who we are more explicitly with the launch of “An Education in Possible” as our School tagline.

With all good wishes,


Peter Henry
Dean