Eric Bickel
Eric brings a great combination of academic research and real-world experience to our courses. His engaging style, creative hands-on exercises, and pragmatic applications ensure that participants are equipped to make excellent decisions in the future.
MENLO PARK, Calif. (PRWEB) May 28, 2021
J. Eric Bickel, a partner and member of the board of directors of management consulting firm Strategic Decisions Group (SDG), has received the Fawn and Vijay Mahajan Teaching Excellence Award for Executive Education, the firm has reported. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to non-degree executive education programs at The University of Texas at Austin.
“This is such a well-deserved recognition of Eric’s contributions to our popular Strategic Decision and Risk Management certificate program,” said Dr. Gaylen Paulson, Associate Dean and Executive Director of Texas Executive Education at UT’s McCombs School of Business. “Eric brings a great combination of academic research and real-world experience to our courses. His engaging style, creative hands-on exercises, and pragmatic applications ensure that participants are equipped to make excellent decisions in the future.”
“SDG is honored to be associated with Eric, not only because of his skills in teaching decision science and decision quality, but also because of the credentials and expertise he brings to some of the difficult industry and public policy challenges of our times,” said Dr. Mark Seidler, CEO of Strategic Decisions Group. “His research into engineering solutions to climate change has garnered international recognition. He is currently investigating value metrics and alternatives to help companies manage decarbonization as part of the energy transition.”
Dr. Bickel is the academic director of the Strategic Decision and Risk Management certificate program, a non-degree program that combines world-renowned faculty from The McCombs School of Business at UT together with experienced practitioners from SDG. Students may take individual two-day classes or complete six classes to earn a professional certificate in Strategic Decision and Risk Management.
The award is granted to a member of the McCombs School faculty for teaching quality—superior participant evaluations, leading-edge materials, and use of new methodologies or media—and for contributions to and development of executive education programs and partnerships.
“The real honor is to be a part of the education journey for so many mid-career professionals who participate in UT’s SDRM program,” said Dr. Bickel. “Much of what I learned about teaching I owe to the support, guidance, and mentoring of my colleagues, in particular Ron Howard at Stanford and Carl Spetzler and Bruce Judd at SDG.”
Dr. Bickel has added a new course to the certificate curriculum, Multi-Party Decision Quality: Collaboration and Competition in Decision Making.
“One thing we hear from decision makers is how frequently they are involved with multiple decision makers, either collaborating with them or in some cases, competing,” said Dr. Bickel. “This new course is a great extension to our fundamental Decision Quality course, which covers what it takes to make great decisions in complex settings. When you get into a multi-party setting, people have different information, they may value outcomes differently—it adds a whole new dimension of complexity to a decision situation.”
Multi-Party Decision Quality will be offered for the first time June 3-4, presented in an interactive live online format.
Dr. Bickel is a professor and director of the Operations Research and Industrial Engineering program at UT. In addition to his SDRM role, he holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management in the McCombs School of Business and directs the Center for Engineering and Decision Analytics (CEDA) and the Engineering Management program.
About Strategic Decisions Group
Founded in 1981, Strategic Decisions Group is a strategy consulting firm renowned for its expertise in strategic decision-making, risk management, stakeholder alignment, and value creation. Through a collaborative, team-based approach, SDG helps its clients find innovative, creative strategies to thrive today, while also helping them build internal competencies and more effective decision-making processes to meet competitive challenges in the future. A unique combination of analytic skills, strategy-development techniques, and industry experience makes SDG a preferred strategy consultant to the global Fortune 500. For more information, visit sdg.com