Habit of Engagement

By Barbara D. Kiernan, M.A. '90

Dr. Michael Tucker, professor of finance, says he's known in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business as "the guy who'll try anything." But supervising an independent study project from a hospital bed in New York while awaiting a liver transplant? No doubt about it - he'll try anything.

Actually, Dr. Tucker wasn't in the hospital when he agreed to shepherd the service-learning project that four master's candidates had agreed to undertake on behalf of Habitat for Humanity of Coastal Fairfield County. But a gall bladder attack last January created a medical emergency for the professor. "Once they got that emergency under control," he says, "I had to stay in the hospital until a suitable liver became available. Since I was there for weeks, I used the time to create assignments, make connections by phone, and stay in touch with the students by e-mail. I think I gave them about 1,000 pages of reading!"

Not quite, says Steve Clark, MBA/Finance '07, who had been a regular weekend volunteer with Habitat years earlier, joining others to build decent, simple, efficient, and affordable homes for low-income families. "With work, school, and family commitments, it seemed impossible to find the time to get involved on my own again," he says, "so for me, this project was a natural fit."

The project would draw on knowledge that Clark, Stefania Fable, Conor Ryan, and Joseph Stolarski had acquired as graduate students in finance, and require them to tailor it to a non-profit organization's needs. Their task was to determine if the local affiliate, formerly called Habitat for Humanity of Greater Bridgeport, could increase the value of its largest asset (mortgages), and by so doing, increase the number of homes it starts each year. But how, you might wonder, did this opportunity land in their laps?

Enter Michael Guarneri '84, a senior project manager at GE Energy Financial Services and a member of the University's Trustees Advisory Council. One of Guarneri's colleagues at GE Financial serves as Habitat's chair, and brought the need for such a study to the attention of his coworkers. Knowing of Fairfield's efforts to make service learning an integral part of the curriculum, Guarneri contacted Dr. Dana Wilkie, assistant dean for graduate studies at the Dolan School, to determine if this project fit the criteria.

"It seemed to relate directly to Fr. von Arx's inaugural address, in which he made the integration of Jesuit values into graduate education a priority," says Dr. Wilkie. She asked Habitat for a formal proposal to confirm what the expectations and deliverables would be, and once she was sure of both rigor and reasonableness, passed it on to the Finance Department. Dr. Tucker, a service-learning veteran, jumped at the chance to be project advisor.

That settled, Dr. Wilkie called a meeting of M.S. in finance and MBA/finance students who had just one finance elective pending. "I was looking for a certain GPA," she says, "and for students whose answer to, ‘what do you want out of this besides three credits?' indicated a genuine interest in service." To her delight, twelve students were interested. To her disappointment, she could choose just four.

And did those four work! They studied the affiliate's cash flow, its existing mortgage portfolio, its previous mortgage transactions, and what other Habitat affiliates around the country were doing. Based on this research, they spelled out four options that could help HFHCFC better assess and enhance its annual building capabilities, and created a computer model that shows how variables such as discount rate, sales proceeds, and mortgages sold affect the bottom line.

At the end of spring semester, the group made a formal presentation on campus to the Habitat Board, detailing what a more organized effort at securitization (selling of mortgages) would do for cash flow and the ability to construct more housing. "The study confirmed that the approach we'd been taking is the right one, but that we need to become more systematic in projecting," said a clearly pleased Rev. Bob Knebel, executive director of the Habitat chapter.

Listening in - via teleconference from home - was one very proud professor, too weak to attend but on the mend. Now back in the classroom, Dr. Tucker got his new liver in April.