Professor Yo-Jud Cheng: A Case Method Pro Not Averse to a Lecture on Dumplings

When Professor Yo-Jud Cheng finished her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College, she had a sense her academic career wasn’t finished. Growing up in Taipei, Taiwan, her father was a professor for her entire life, but it was her mother’s experience — pursuing a Ph.D. while Cheng was in grade school — that gave her a glimpse of what it was like to become an academic.

“I have so many fond memories from high school of my mom and me sitting next to each other at our computers, working on essays late into the night,” Cheng said. “Throughout that time, I was always listening to my parents’ dinner table conversations, where they were constantly learning and discussing new questions. It piqued my interest in pursuing a graduate degree myself.”

She returned to Boston, Massachusetts, a few years later to pursue her DBA at Harvard Business School with an eye on following in her parents’ footsteps. That’s where she discovered the research passion that drives her to this day: corporate governance and, in particular, the decision-making behind CEO transitions.

“I’m fascinated by the planning processes that underlie leadership changes,” Cheng said. “When you talk to board directors and ask them to name their top responsibilities, hiring and firing the CEO almost always rises to the top. Directors know that selecting a CEO is one of the most important decisions they make. And yet, so many boards struggle with running effective transition processes. This is true across a wide range of organizations, from startups to nonprofits to large public companies with extensive resources.”

Cheng’s breakthrough moment studying the topic came when her graduate school ad viser connected her with a senior HR leader at Cisco who had just helped the organization navigate a lengthy CEO transition process to replace longtime CEO John Chambers. Cheng’s adviser suggested they write a case study on the Cisco CEO transition, but he urged her to go much deeper than his initial contact. She interviewed more than a dozen C-suite executives, board members and search consultants.

“The opportunity to connect my academic experience with the firsthand insights from those interviews deepened my appreciation of the importance of rigorous research that stays relevant to what’s most important to practitioners and managers.”

Now in her seventh year at Darden, Cheng said she’s been able to continue diving deep er on the same line of research thanks to not only the steady supply of CEO transitions, each unfolding differently, but also the Darden students in her classes who constantly fuel her with new perspectives and research questions.

The mutually reinforcing relationship between research and the classroom has grown even stronger since Cheng became the faculty adviser for Darden’s Golub Capital Board Fellows Program. The program matches MBA students with local nonprofits to serve as non voting board members for a year and complete a strategic capacity-building project.

Last year, the program received a substantial development grant from Golub Capital to support the growth of the program and to establish the program as a signature element of Darden’s experiential learning initiatives. “The Board Fellows Program brings together my interest in board governance with a unique opportunity to contribute directly to the Charlottesville community while creating valuable learning experiences for our students.”

First Impressions as Only Darden Can Do

After growing up and spending most of her life in major metropolises, Cheng admits it was a “big leap of faith” to come to Darden, in the comparatively small college town of Charlottesville. In hindsight, however, she said it was the best decision she could have made.

When she was interviewing for a faculty position, Cheng said many universities took her out to nice dinners at restaurants. But at Darden, she was treated to dinner at Professor Jared Harris’s house with his family. In addition, the classroom was a second thought at best on some visits, but at Darden, Cheng attended a class. She said sitting in not only let her experience the energy in the room up close but also gave her a sense of how import ant teaching was at the School.

“My Darden visit stood out. I got a great sense of the culture,” Cheng said.

When it was finally time to teach her first Darden class in Q2 of the 2019–20 academic year — the First Year core “Strategy” class — Cheng said she was nervous. While she was steeped in the case method from her time at Harvard, she was worried the students would be disappointed to have a new professor teaching her first course.

She decided to be honest and tell them it was her first class, anyway.

“The class burst into applause the second I told them,” she said. “It was such a warm welcome to Darden and encapsulates what is special about this community.”

The Darden Difference

From John Forbes to Alec Horniman to Bill Sihler, many of Darden’s early professors came from Harvard Business School and would jokingly refer to their alma mater as “that other case method school to the north.” Cheng confirms that while the two schools share case method DNA, there is still something distinctly different about the student experience.

“The size and structure of Darden classes, along with our social events and college-town setting, enable students to build deep relationships with one another,” she said. “That sense of comfort and camaraderie in the room greatly expands what we can accomplish together.”

Cheng said she’s been pleasantly surprised by how well she gets to know students. Given Charlottesville’s size, she said it’s not uncommon to bump into students out on the town. Her husband used to be baffled that they would want to stop and talk to her, rather than keeping their distance.

Darden also creates many opportunities for faculty and students to forge deeper connections, from Darden Cup events to Cold Call social gatherings on Thursdays. One of her favorite opportunities to connect is the annual Building Goodness in April charity auction, in which professors donate experiences that students bid on to raise money for the Building Goodness Foundation.

For the past several years, she has hosted students at her house to learn how to make traditional dumplings, like the ones she grew up making with her family in Taiwan.

“It’s such a fun, interactive and communal way to make a meal together,” she said.

Cheng instructs students on how to cut vegetables, make the filling and correctly fold the dumplings. However, don’t mistake Cheng’s kitchen for the case method class room. She’s not afraid to lecture when it comes to making a proper dumpling.

“Some things I’m very particular about,” she said. “Like overstuffing. I tell them over and over, ‘You’re not going to be able to close your dumpling if you put too much filling in there,’ but people get greedy. So I harp on them a little bit. I embrace this as one of my few opportunities to tell my students exactly what they’re supposed to do.”