By Nathaniel Luce
Professor Rangaraj “Ranga” Ramanujan received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Healthcare Management Division at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management.
Established in 2005, the award recognizes innovative and outstanding teaching that takes place in the classroom and provides the opportunity to encourage, recognize and reward the work of excellent, dedicated and inspiring teachers. The criteria are so stringent that it had not been awarded since 2014. Professor Ramanujan is only the second professor from a Business School to ever win the award.
“(Winning the award) requires excellence and innovation in all matters related to teaching — course design, classroom teaching, mentoring — as well as contributions to multiple types of health care audiences,” said Tim Vogus, Professor of Management and a close colleague of Ramanujam. “Obviously, Ranga excels in all of these things and more.”
“Applying Management Principles to Health Care”
For Ramanujam, the award is validation for the years of work he’s invested in his courses, particularly the MBA elective Health Care Delivery Organizations, which he calls the “centerpiece” of his healthcare-related teaching.
“I started this course about 7 years ago, shortly after I came to Owen,” he says. “Initially, it was just an introduction to health care delivery orgs. It’s since become a health care strategy course, focused on asking how does one organize health care delivery to provide value to patients, which is a very timely topic.”
I put a lot of effort into my teaching. I feel honored and excited to be recognized for this effort on a national level.
This ongoing evolution has been a collaborative process; Ramanujam acknowledges receiving advice and assistance from Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter and guest speakers who thoughtfully link their content to the rest of the course. Through the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Ramanujam has delivered seminars on value-based health care delivery organizations to medical professionals on campus.
“I put a lot of effort into my teaching. I feel honored and excited to be recognized for this effort on a national level,” he said. “I think it affirms the idea that there is real value in applying management principles to health care.”
About the Health Care Management Division of the Academy of Management
The health care management division is dedicated to understanding the role of professionals and organizations in providing health care both locally and internationally. Major focuses of research by divisional members include: the performance of health care workers and organizations; public policy issues, such as access to care, competition, cost control and quality of care, and their implications for managing health care organizations; health care finance and marketing; and empirical or conceptual application of theory to the study of health care organizations, even on topics that might also fall within another division’s domain.
