Columbia University's Board of Trustees has appointed Professor Elke Weber to the Jerome R. Chazen Professorship of International Business effective November 1, 2003. Professor Weber received her BA. in 1980, Summa Cum Laude, from York University in Toronto, Canada and her MA and PhD from Harvard in 1984. Elke joined the School’s Management Division in 1999 from Ohio State University. A joint appointment, she is also a faculty member in the University’s Psychology Department. Elke works at the intersection of psychology and economics. She is an expert on behavioral models of judgment and decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Recently, Elke has been investigating psychologically appropriate ways to measure and model individual and cultural differences in risk taking. A popular teacher, Elke’s courses on Managerial Decision Making and Negotiations are highly rated. She is also active at the University where she founded and co-directs the Center for the Decision Sciences. In addition to appointments in the United States, Elke has held positions overseas at the Otto Beisheim Graduate School of Corporate Management and most recently, in 2002, spent a half a year in Berlin at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Center for Advanced Study).
Elke is extremely involved with the Columbia Business School community, most visibly as the Academic Director of the Chazen Institute, where she worked closely with students and faculty to oversee the successful launch of the Chazen Web Journal for International Business. Since its inception one year ago, the Web Journal has attracted 2,000 subscribers and over 18,000 visitors from 93 countries. She also leads the Chazen Faculty Advisory Committee, the Chazen Web Journal Advisory Committee and Columbia’s Center for International Business Education.
Elke has held several internationally recognized positions within her field. She is past president of the Society for Mathematical Psychology and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. She just finished a seven-year term on two advisory committees of the National Academy of Sciences. Elke has edited two journals and currently serves on the editorial boards of six journals. A prolific writer, Elke has published five books and over sixty articles and book chapters. In 2003, she won the Academy of Management, Organizational Behavior Division’s Best Paper Award.
The Chazen Professorship of International Business is awarded to a distinguished faculty member for outstanding contributions to international business research. The Professorship was first held by Alberto Giovannini and followed by Trevor Harris. Given the global perspective of Elke’s research, her leadership and her wide-ranging involvement with the University community, the Chazen Professorship seems particularly appropriate.