“I want to make a real difference
in the way people think about running a business.
Not at the end of the quarter, but three months
from now, three years from now, thirty years
from now.” - Dan
Turner
Dan Turner
Senior Lecturer in Marketing Wins 2005 PACCAR
Award
Dan Turner keeps a bullhorn in his office, which
might seem odd for a marketer who isn't named "Barnum."
It dates back to his doctoral days at Northwestern's
Kellogg School of Management, where Turner developed
a teaching habit of amplifying his delivery of
key points through an improvised paper megaphone.
One former executive student, a senior finance
officer at an import/export company, came to appreciate
those key points when she was summarily placed
in charge of the firm's marketing department.
She sent him a gift in appreciation.
"On
the card," Turner recalls, "she wrote
that the technique works really well but that perhaps
I needed to be a little louder, so here's
one of our products to use" – he switches
on the bullhorn – "INSTEAD OF ROLLING
UP A PIECE OF PAPER."
The bullhorn is not his only cheap trick. The senior
lecturer in marketing employs a panoply of unorthodox
techniques to engage his students. He flings coins
at a wall to draw attention to the concept of selective
perception. He prints his marketing decision model
on a Frisbee that he distributes at the end of
the course. He tells corny stories in order to
illustrate lessons, like the tale of his woebegone
high school muscle car to demonstrate the different
frameworks of marketing research.
It's all part of an effort to inspire classroom
breakthroughs using proven marketing knowledge.
In Turner's courses, the method is also the
message.
"The model of human memory is important for
marketers. But it's also important for education," he
says. "People aren't designed to sit
and passively absorb. They have to be engaged.
My goal is to make better management decision makers.
And I'll do whatever I need to be effective
in conveying that information."
It seems to be working. Turner was chosen by the
School's MBA students to receive the 2005
PACCAR Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Business
School's premier teaching honor that includes
a $25,000 stipend from PACCAR, Inc., a global technology
leader in the capital goods and financial services
markets.
The award benefactor might be pleased to know that
Turner knows a thing or two about trucks. His father
used to drive a Class 8—"That's
a big rig," Turner explains—alongside
a litany of other blue collar jobs he worked. Though
the family tree was not rooted in higher education,
his parents were determined to keep their oft-distracted
son on academic course.
Turner worked full-time at a grocery store throughout
high school and St. Louis University, where he
finally saw the light. "I'm fundamentally
convinced that going to college changed my life," he
recalls. "Suddenly my eyes were opened to
the way knowledge gives you a greater degree of
control over your life."
After earning an MBA from Washington University
and a PhD at Kellogg, Turner joined the UW Business
School faculty in 1999 and now is in highest demand
throughout the Business School's graduate
and executive programs.
The "cheap ploys" he uses in the classroom
are aimed at much more than a quick hit. Deep,
resounding learning is his ultimate goal.
"I don't just want to help people do well
on a test," Turner says. "I want to
make a real difference in the way they think about
running a business. Not at the end of the quarter,
but three months from now, three years from now,
thirty years from now." |
