FACULTY PROFILE: Wharton Prof Siegel brings finance to life

If doing what you love -- and getting paid for it -- guarantees happiness, Finance Professor Jeremy Siegel is having the time of his life. Siegel's enthusiasm for teaching recently resulted in his designation as the top graduate business professor in the nation by Business Week magazine. "I'm very honored, to say the least," he said, referring to the award. "It's sort of a feeling of responsibility, now everyone expects me to be so great, but I love teaching, and I never thought I would be honored in this way by an article with such circulation." Not that awards for excellence in education are anything new to Siegel. Certificates recognizing the dedication to students that has characterized his career cover the few inches of desktop and wall space in his office not occupied by books. For Siegel, who has felt a calling to the professoriate since his sophomore year of high school, teaching is more than a vocation -- it's a passion. "I love being up there [in front of a class]," he said. "When I get the interest of students in the class, when I see their eyes really understanding and fixated on me, it's a very, very satisfying feeling." During his tenure at the University, Siegel has been involved in nearly every facet of the Wharton School's Finance curriculum, instructing doctoral candidates and undergraduates alike about the mechanics of money and markets. He is currently teaching an undergraduate section of Finance 101, along with two MBA classes. An advanced seminar based on Siegel's new book, Stocks for the Long Run, is also on his schedule this semester. "I used to teach three MBA macro[economics] classes, and I and several others felt that the undergraduates were being slighted," he said. "I replaced one of the MBA courses with an undergraduate course [last year], and it was a great experience. "Even though the MBA administration still wanted me to teach [all three] courses, I told them -- and they understood the arguments -- that we should bring some good teachers down to the undergraduates," Siegel added. He admitted, however, that at a research institution like the University, professors are under tremendous pressure to do research and publish their findings, in order to obtain promotions and tenure. These priorities decrease the amount of time professors can dedicate to improving their teaching techniques. "If you want a university to stay great -- and I think the students deep down do understand this -- it has to have the outstanding people in the field, and the outstanding people in the field come from in the research," he said. Still, Siegel has managed to strike a balance between teaching and research by integrating empirical financial data with the principles he presents in the classroom. "Theory that's pure theory, that doesn't bring you toward anything that's in the real world, is very sterile," Siegel said. "Although it might be a valid intellectual discipline, it's probably not the right thing to teach at a business school, where practical knowledge is supposed to come from the application of theoretical concepts." Siegel said he keeps his application skills sharp through independent consulting work, made possible by the flexibility of his faculty position. "[Outside consulting] is good for the students if it doesn't get to be too much, because the professor gets connected to real-life situations," he said. "That's a very important factor because students are going to enter into that [when they graduate]." According to Siegel, though, trying to communicate the fundamentals and usefulness of financial theory to students is not the most challenging part of his job. "The hardest thing about being a professor, the most tedious thing, is grading exams," he said with a laugh, adding that he writes his own tests and then carefully screens and selects teaching assistants each semester to make the grading process easier. Wharton senior Shaun Smith, who helped design and produce all of the tables in Stocks for the Long Run, has been doing research with Siegel since his freshman year -- although Smith had to successfully complete a small economics project before Siegel would hire him. Smith said he works hard, often taking calls from Siegel at home when the professor needs statistics to be prepared overnight. The pressures of his job, however, are outweighed by the opportunity Smith has to benefit from Siegel's mentorship, knowledge and expertise about finance. "He invigorates the subject, and makes it engaging," Smith said. "That is a unique talent, the most valuable thing he brings to his students. Not only do they walk away understanding the models and rigorous parts of [Finance 602 or 101], but they also have a context for that knowledge."