Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business has announced Reena Aggarwal and William Baber the school’s first Robert E. McDonough Professors.

The McDonough professorships, named after the late California businessman and 1947 alumnus, were designed to recognize business school faculty members for their extraordinary contributions to research and teaching in the classroom.

“This is just one of the many ways our school can honor the memory of Bob McDonough,” business school Dean George Daly said of the alumnus for whom the Georgetown's business school also is named, “a devoted alumnus who strongly supported the education of future generations of business leaders at Georgetown University.”

Aggarwal previously served as the Stallkamp Fellow in Finance at the business school, where she has been a faculty member for more than 20 years. Her research focuses on emerging financial markets and institutions, initial public offerings and corporate governance. She has been listed among “Outstanding Faculty” in the Business Week Guide to the Best Business Schools.

Her work has been published widely in academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Management, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, and the Journal of Portfolio Management. The business school also awarded her the faculty research award in 2000 and in 1999.

“I am particularly honored with this appointment because Bob McDonough was such a loyal friend of the business school and Georgetown,” Aggarwal said. “I also feel an important sense of responsibility to further the intellectual climate at the school and continue to bring international recognition to Georgetown.”

In addition to teaching, Aggarwal has served as interim dean and deputy dean of the business school. She also has been a visiting professor of finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, a FINRA Academic Fellow, an academic fellow at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a visiting research scholar at the International Monetary Fund and a Fulbright scholar to Brazil and Chile.

Baber returns to teach at the business school after serving as the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Business at George Washington University, where he’s been since 1991. With more than 25 years of experience of teaching financial and managerial accounting, his current research focuses on the determinants of executive compensation in both for-profit and not-for-profit contexts and on issues surrounding the quality and announcement of earnings.

"Georgetown's business school has a wonderful tradition," Baber said, "and I am proud to be part of it."

Prior to entering academia, Baber worked as an auditor and consultant with Arthur Young and Company, now Ernst and Young, in Washington. His research has been published in a number of academic journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy.

Aggarwal received her doctorate in finance from the University of Maryland and a master’s management studies from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India. Baber received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh and his bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa.

-- Teresa Mannix

(June 15, 2009)