Scholarly research at a professional school has a reputation not unlike the Royal Familyýs: nice to look at but is this really necessary?

But even at professional schools, research plays a much greater role than many imagine. At the Freeman School, research is an essential part of the educational experience and one whose impact is felt throughout the institution. "Research is key to the success of the Freeman School," says Dean James McFarland. "Top-notch scholarly work on the part of our faculty is what distinguishes the Freeman School from other

schools and what drives our ranking. If you look at the most highly ranked business schools in the nation, virtually every one of them has an outstanding reputation for research. The Freeman School is no exception."

One of McFarlandýs first acts as dean of the Freeman School was to reestablish the schoolýs doctoral program. With the goal of moving Freeman into the upper ranks of the nationýs business schools, McFarland recognized the importance of establishing a solid academic reputation and the way to that is through research. Schools that support research attract the best faculty, who in turn produce the kind of scholarly research capable of attracting national attention and boosting a schoolýs reputation. Schools with better reputations attract better students, and better students make it easier to attract top-notch faculty and students. It is a crucial cycle, and one that starts with research.

"Unless you do good quality research and publish good quality research, the school does not get

recognized, no matter how good your teaching may be," says professor of operations management Amiya Chakravary. "Of the top schools that get ranked all the time, their research productivity is very high."

"No school has ever risen in the rankings substantially without having a good research program," says Tom Noe, A. B. Freeman Chair of Finance. "Teaching may be extremely important as far as output, but itýs not something that outsiders can observe. If all we do is a great job in the classroom, people arenýt going to recognize the Freeman School for that reason. You have to do something to attract external visibility and the way every school does that is through research."

In todayýs academic environment, research is no longer enough. Virtually every member of the faculty is expected to publish research in top-tier journals as well as to fulfill a teaching load. That combination ensures a dynamic classroom environment.

"Universities have a dual function to generate knowledge and to diffuse knowledge," says Arthur P. Brief, Lawrence Martin Professor of Business. "The knowledge transferred in the classroom comes from scholarship, or it should come from scholarship. If you donýt have a scholar in front of the classroom who is generating the knowledge being presented or who has the skill to critically review the literature being presented, then the only difference between me and somebody off the street is platform skills. Itýs pretty scary to me to disconnect scholarship from teaching."

"Research itself is not enough," says Chakravarty. "We talk about technology transfer. Well, we need to have a similar process in business schools, transferring our research knowledge to the classroom. All of the research that youýre doing may not be appropriate in a classroom situation, but certain specific things may be taken out of it. There is a tremendous value in combining research with the application and presenting that in the classroom."

"We are very, very engaged in doing research and the nature of the research we do canýt help but impact what we do in the classroom," adds Brief.

Others suggest that active researchers are better able to present not just their own work but the work of others. According to Exxon Professor of Accounting Prem Jain, a solid foundation in research is the most important training a classroom instructor can receive. "Research develops a way of thinking in a critical, truthful manner to present to the students," he explains. "The abilities of people who do not research to teach complex subject matters are really limited. They donýt have the experience. Not every class can be taught by national-level scholars, but good schools always have good researchers. It is absolutely essential to have that environment. Without research, I donýt think you can have excellent teaching, because you just canýt attract excellent people."

Research impacts the classroom in less direct ways as well. Many of the Freeman Schoolýs top junior faculty members were attracted to the school by its support of and opportunities for research. "The Freeman School is an entrepreneurial type of school," says Jianan Wu, who joined the school at the beginning of the 1998ý99 school year. "You basically can do whatever kind of research you want as long as itýs top-notch academic research. You really donýt have any constraints to guide what you do or donýt do, and I think that philosophy encourages you to do the best research in your area."

"My work is mainly cross-disciplinary," says assistant professor of accounting David Lesmond. "Some schools place a hard wall boundary between the disciplines. At Tulane, the boundary is not there. Tulane encourages interdisciplinary research."

"Of all the schools I interviewed with, Freeman was the school where it really clicked in terms of both research interests of others and the commitment of the administration in trying to help the junior faculty," says Venkat Subramaniam, assistant professor of finance.

Not coincidentally, Lesmond and Subramaniam are also among the Freeman Schoolýs most honored teachers. While the best teachers are not necessarily the best researchers (and vice versa), Subramaniam says it is only logical that classroom instructors are more effective presenting research they have worked on themselves. "I like the idea of talking about things that Iým interested in in the classroom," explains Subramaniam, who in 1999 received both the James T. Murphy Teaching Excellence Award and the Outstanding Young Researcher Award. "I sort of like my weekly fix. I obviously donýt talk about my research interests in as great detail as I do in my research work, but Iým able to bring all the important findings to the classroom."

What follows are profiles of some of the Freeman Schoolýs top researchers and descriptions of their recent work.