In the 1990s, Suzanne Shu was all-things-engineering. She earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University, took a job as a project manager for Bell Communications Research in New Jersey and then became assistant director of admissions at Cornell’s College of Engineering.
Today, Shu is an associate professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, with interests in how people make decisions, the dynamics of self-control and the process of procrastination.
Shu’s big shift can be traced to a decision she made to pursue an M.B.A. , which she earned in 2003, and a Ph.D. in 2004, from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, where her studies included behavioral economics, decision sciences and marketing.
For her leap to academia, Shu credits one of her M.B.A. classes: “Managerial Decision Making” inspired her to learn more about decisions and behaviors — areas that she found puzzling in the workplace.
“As an engineering project manager, I learned about aspects of business that I hadn’t really been exposed to in college,” said Shu. “I also learned a lot about human behavior in the workplace, and watched people make decisions that didn’t always seem rational or optimal.”
It was UCLA Anderson’s strength in the research and study of behavioral science and decision-making that lead Shu to join the school’s ranks.
“There are only one or two other business schools across the country with as many outstanding faculty in this area,” Shu said. “It’s a very invigorating and productive environment with amazingly smart people who share and discuss the latest discoveries in marketing, behavioral economics, psychology and behavioral finance.”
Another UCLA Anderson attraction: the work that faculty do collaboratively on research projects. Shu cited joint efforts with faculty colleagues at UCLA Anderson and the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine studying how to use behavioral economics to encourage healthy behavior among patients.
Shu has recently become interested in “decumulation,” which involves how people manage their retirement income once they’ve stopped working. She looks at ways people can optimize their spending and make better decisions more easily that reflect their individual needs and situations.
Shu also revels in teaching marketing courses to students who, she said, often start out thinking the discipline is only about advertising.
“We take a very rigorous approach to marketing that includes teaching quantitative tools that help marketers make informed decisions about customers and their environments,” she said. “Getting students to see the relationships between marketing and statistics, strategy, economics and even finance is very rewarding.”
Learn more about Shu and her research in these stories — Why do we postpone pleasure and Why people choose to lose by claiming Social Security benefits early — and at her UCLA Anderson page.
This story was originally published in the UCLA Anderson Blog.