Pankaj Maskara wins International Teaching Award
Pankaj Maskara, Ph.D.
Pankaj Maskara, Ph.D., CFA was awarded the “Innovation in teaching” award by Financial Management Association International (FMA), leading association of finance professionals and educators around the world, at their annual meeting in New Orleans on Nov 25, 2019. Prof. Maskara’s innovative method of incorporating human literacy in finance education enhances students’ employability, promotes entrepreneurship, and prepares his students for the age of artificial intelligence. It motivates students of finance to leverage their creativity and people skills in addition to their math and technical knowledge. Prof. Maskara says “developing entrepreneurial mindset among our students is the most effective, probably the only, way to prepare our students for the challenges that lie ahead for them.”
FMA awards three professors per year for teaching innovations that are broadly transferable in terms of teacher skills / connections and have measurable impact on students, institutions of higher education, and the finance profession. Professor Maskara’s method of teaching has helped his students get jobs, internships, mentorship, promotions, consulting projects, and business opportunities while performing tasks assigned as a part of his class. He prepares his students to deal with uncertainty, manage expectations, identify inefficiencies as business opportunities, make decisions in the environment of incomplete and incorrect information, and to connect with others. His students find his methods very unorthodox and challenging but highly enriching.
A student’s comment neatly sums up Prof. Maskara’s effectiveness as a teacher.
“I feel that you should know that you were the most influential professor that I have had throughout my college experience. So many students share my opinion, but while we are still students they cannot be taken seriously since they could be seen as flattery. I hold you, as several others do also, as my highest role model and hope one day you will be able to look back and be proud I was your student. It is my opinion that your influence on me was so strong that any future success of mine was directly due to you.”
Know more about Prof. Maskara’s teaching innovation and his philosophy at
http://www.fmaconferences.org/NewOrleans/Papers/FMA%20award.pdf and