PLEASE USE THE LINKS BELOW TO BROWSE CLASS NOTES BY YEAR...
1930-39 | 1940-49 | 1950-59 | 1960-69 | 1970-79 | 1980-89 | 1990-93 | 1994-96 | 1997-99 | XP-IXP
STUDENT LOOKS FOR LONG-TERM SOLUTIONS TO COMMUNITY PROBLEMS.
RON HUBERMAN is not just an M.B.A. student. He’s also studying
for a master’s degree in health administration policy at the School
of Social Service Administration. And he is assisting with a domestic
violence project in the trauma center of Cook County Hospital.
And he’s a mountain bike buff.
And, oh yes, Huberman is a Chicago police officer. Which, he said,
has made him a better business school student. “You learn to analyze
situations and handle lots of data, small pieces of data, very
quickly. They teach you that it’s very important when assessing
a situation that you look at all sides before making a decision,”
he said. “I think that’s a valuable lesson that I brought from
the police department. And if a business deal went bad, I could
probably knock somebody down pretty quickly, too.”
He laughed, then said, “That’s a joke, of course.”
Huberman, 27, is direct, centered, relaxed but focused. He answers
questions completely but so carefully that one almost hears the
ghostly “Ma’am” hovering unspoken at the end of each statement.
He is, in a word, earnest. Though some of his classmates, entering
with the expectation of doing public service, may have been swayed
by the lure of large corporate salaries, Huberman’s goals have
remained steady.
“Most kids probably want to do this,” he said. “I think everyone
wants to be a fireman or a policeman when they’re six years old,
but some people grow out of it. I just don’t think I ever did.”
Since Huberman joined the Chicago Police Department in 1995, he
has worked in the Rogers Park neighborhood on the North Side and
on lakefront bicycle patrol. “There’s a real sense of ownership
in community policing and working with different neighborhoods
to improve the quality of life,” he said. “Also, in an eight-hour
tour of duty you just have no idea what to expect. . . . I think
there are very few positions in the world where you can see as
much about humanity and life in any given day as you can as a
police officer. It’s a good opportunity to see people at their
very best and their very worst.”
Huberman not only enjoys his job, but has served with distinction.
He has been honored with a department commendation, the Spirit
of Rogers Park Award, an officer of the month award, a special
service award for devotion to duty and professionalism, and twenty-four
honorable mentions for excellence in conducting investigations.
To add to his honors, Huberman recently received the Paul and
Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. The two-year fellowship,
which pays half of the recipient’s tuition and a $20,000 annual
living stipend, was given to thirty recipients from twelve hundred
applicants nationwide. The fellowship is designed to support the
graduate study of immigrants or their children.
Huberman emigrated from Israel with his family when he was five.
His father, a cancer researcher, accepted a position in Tennessee
and later moved his family to LaGrange, Illinois, so he could
work at Argonne National Laboratory. Huberman said he is grateful
for the recognition from the Soros Foundation, though he doesn’t
feel like an immigrant.
“I feel very much like an American, actually,” said Huberman,
who is now a U.S. citizen. “I acculturated very quickly, but I
still maintain a certain identity and pride in Israel along with
having pride in the United States.”
Huberman, who entered SSA as a part-time student in 1996 and the
GSB as a part-time student in autumn 1998, decided to take a yearlong
educational leave from the police department in December so that
he could attend the GSB full-time. He misses the camaraderie he
shared with his partners on the force, though he said that they
support his educational goals. In fact, his colleagues tease him
about his plans to return to law enforcement. “They think I’m
crazy,” Huberman said affectionately. “They’re like, ‘What are
you doing coming back with your graduate degrees?’”
Huberman will graduate from both programs next December. His long-term
goal (“hopefully not too long-term,” he said) is to be chief of
police of a “good-sized city.”
Before going back to school, he thought the matter through carefully.
“Clearly there are a lot of short-term solutions to problems,
but to really solve long-term problems you have to understand
the economic and social problems that exist in a lot of troubled
inner-city neighborhoods,” said Huberman, explaining why he chose
to enroll in SSA.
“On the other hand,” he added, “the business school is helping
me address many of the technical and management aspects of a police
department. I’ve learned about human resources management, organizational
behavior, economics and accounting, statistics, a whole list of
things.”
Huberman especially liked a class on managing organizations, taught
by assistant professor Bernd Wittenbrink. “[He] talked a lot about
building shared vision in an organization and how you go about
adjusting and changing an organization’s culture,” Huberman said.
“I think in police departments, a lot of times the culture lags
behind the policy, like with community policing. It takes the
troops a while to catch on. So I think the skills in that class
will be most effective in taking policy and implementing it as
a manager.”
Police work has taught Huberman that poor communities need a lot
of help to create hope–and that partnerships among the police,
community members, and businesses are essential. He said he wants
to be an example to other business school students, to remind
them to incorporate the needs of the community into their business
plans.
“I think it’s very important for business students to continue
to realize that business does not occur in a vacuum,” Huberman
said. “It’s very easy to live and work in corporate America and
not necessarily be that aware of everything else that’s going
on. Even right by the GSB campus there’s such poverty . . . .”
He paused, as if he thought better of something he was about to
say. Then he continued, “I think that the business world has a
great responsibility to make sure that [it] gives back to a diversity
of communities. I think sharing my experiences as a police officer
working in some impoverished communities will hopefully give some
people the impetus and the interest so that they help individuals
and communities that are disadvantaged.” –Jennifer Vanasco
Email GSB Chicago - GSB Chicago Front Page - GSB Home