Tuck Honors Smith, Singal, and Blanchard with 2025 Teaching Excellence Awards

For teaching in the core curriculum, students chose two professors who co-teach the Analytics course: Jim Smith, the Jack Byrne Distinguished Professor in Decision Science, and Raghav Singal, an assistant professor of business administration. In the elective curriculum, students selected Emily Blanchard, an associate professor of business administration and the Daniel R. Revers T’89 Faculty Fellow, who teaches Cooperation and Competition in the 21st Century Global Economy.

The Teaching Excellence Awards were set up by the Class of 2011 to “celebrate the learning environment at Tuck by honoring the faculty who, in the eyes of their students, have made an outstanding contribution to the quality of the educational experience.” Each year, an academic representative from the graduating class surveys his or her classmates about their favorite teachers and meets with a committee to examine the comments and data and select the winners.

Jim Smith and Raghav Singal have been co-teaching Analytics since the fall of 2020. Their partnership in this core course—which introduces analytic methods for modeling decision problems, understanding data, and using models and data to make wise decisions—has an interesting dynamic that has proven successful. Smith has been teaching for 35 years, and Singal was just named one of Poets & Quants’ 40 best business school professors under 40 years old. They each teach different sections of the course, but they coordinate very closely on the content, and students from each section have chances to interact with both professors during evening recitation sessions.

Analytics, as its name implies, is one of the more technical core courses at Tuck and is based entirely on modeling with spreadsheets. Some students enter the course with a lot of spreadsheet experience, while others have almost none. Smith and Singal bridge that divide by using applications and cases that help students connect concepts to practice. And they always infuse their conceptual teaching with real examples from the business world. One of their most popular cases is about the fitness and social media app Strava, which was founded in Hanover and now has more than 150 million users. In their presentation of the case, which deals with a data warehousing problem the company had to solve as its user numbers grew quickly, Singal and Smith show screenshots from the app of a cycling activity by fellow Tuck professor Leslie Robinson, and the weekly leaderboard for the Tuck Cycling Club (many Tuck students use Strava). “Ultimately, we’re just building spreadsheet models, but we try to keep the setting interesting,” Singal says. “Another example is our case on Gillette versus Energizer: it’s about decision trees, but we also teach about patent infringement.”

As in many core courses, group work is a key facet of Analytics, and that also helps students of varying spreadsheet skill levels learn the material. Each class session leads with a discussion of the homework due that day, then the teachers push a little further into the next lesson, which forms the basis of the assignment for the next class. Smith and Singal like to give their students difficult assignments and help them get through it. “One of the goals is to make things a little bit challenging,” Smith says, “so that their frustration leads to an ‘aha!’ And then in class we try to turn those ‘ahas’ into ‘hahahas’ and have fun with the material.”

Here’ what some students commented about Smith and Singal’s teaching in Analytics:

“As someone who came in with no Excel or modeling experience, I was initially intimidated. However, Professors Smith and Singal made learning incredibly approachable, fun, and supportive from day one. It’ clear they’re deeply committed to their students’ success, and every time I see them on campus, they always take the time to stop and chat!”

“Jim and Raghav work closely together to present Analytics in a way that is both relatable and educational. From seeing how data can help optimize bus routes or make personal decisions, they teach with humor and kindness.”

The Teaching Excellence Award is nothing new for Emily Blanchard. She won it in 2016 and 2022 for teaching the core course Global Economics for Managers. In 2021, Blanchard, who served as the Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of State in the Biden Administration, introduced her elective course, Cooperation and Competition in the 21st Century Global Economy. When creating the course, she asked herself three questions to triangulate to a topic: What is she most excited about right now? What does she know? And what do Tuck students need to know? As a renowned trade economist who studies the interaction of firms, workers, and governments in the global supply chain, Blanchard views today’s fast-changing economic and geopolitical landscape as rife with learning opportunities for MBA students.

For one, the pandemic has made it clear that global events are of first-order importance for firms and organizations everywhere and in every line of business. Add to that the heightening competition between the U.S. and China, imminent and unpredictable disruptions due to climate change, and the growing power of technology firms, and you have the basic structure of Blanchard’s elective. What all these challenges have in common is that navigating them will require governments, firms, and communities to strike a balance between competition and cooperation. With that theme in mind, the course covers competitive economic policies and the institutions and agreements that foster global cooperation; the rise of global value chains and growing concerns over national security; the global innovation race and rising market power in the tech sector; and the challenges of sustainable and inclusive globalization, including the battles over export controls.

While the course is not a seminar, Blanchard wanted to capture the engaging dynamic of her 15-student research-to-practice course. To that end, the new course includes weekly policy briefings and “hot-seat exchanges,” in which one set of students will deliver impartial briefs on key policy issues while other students will be in the hot-seat and must advance a policy agenda that aligns with their values and beliefs. “During the briefings, students will need to identify and articulate tradeoffs with clarity, crispness, and balance,” Blanchard explains.  “Conversely, when they are in the hot-seat, students will practice taking a stand with passion and poise, saying Here’s what I believe, and here’s why I believe it.” A key goal, says Blanchard, is for students to realize there’s rarely a single ‘for versus against’ dividing line, as there is in an Oxford debate or much of today’s simplified political rhetoric. “I’m hoping students leave with a richer appreciation for the incredible diversity of perspectives in the global economy, and a new eagerness to engage in the fundamental conversations that will shape its future.”

Here’s what some students had to say about Blanchard’s teaching in Cooperation and Competition in the 21st Century Global Economy:

“Professor Blanchard’s contagious energy and passion for international economic policy make even the most complex concepts easy to grasp and directly applicable to our post-Tuck careers. She not only connects economics, policy, and business in a way that helps us understand today’s most pressing global challenges but is also incredibly generous with her time and support, always showing up for her students.”

“Professor Emily Blanchard sets the standard for teaching at a business school. In Competition and Cooperation in the 21st Century Global Economy, she led the room with both authority and humor as we navigated complex macroeconomic concepts. Outside of the classroom, she is always willing to share her advice and wisdom, whether about tariffs or parenting!”

Smith, Singal, and Blanchard will deliver the “Last Lecture” on Friends and Family Day on Friday, June 6.