The Daniels management professor is the first in the College’s history to receive the award
Cindi Fukami delivers her University Lecture, “The Third Road: My Adventures at Daniels and DU”
Robert Frost stood in front of two forest roads, pondering which he should take, regretting he couldn’t travel both. Cindi Fukami sat in her department chair’s office and mulled a similar question.
As a newer faculty member at the State University of New York at Buffalo, she felt the need to decide: Would she take the safer, more traditional (and, at the time, more respected) path toward research? Or would she pursue her passion for teaching?
In her March 6 University Lecture, “The Third Road: My Adventures at Daniels and DU,” Fukami detailed the alternate route she took—and, in many ways, paved—to the University of Denver.
“If you look long enough and hard enough, there is a third road at schools that support a balanced approach,” Fukami said, addressing DU’s Maglione Hall. “Here we call it ‘the balanced teacher-scholar model.’ I started walking down that path and discovered the career I hoped I would have.”
DU rewarded Fukami for her long, successful career by bestowing upon her the University Lecturer Award, which honors superlative creative and scholarly work. Fukami, who will retire in 2025 after 41 years at the business school, is the first Daniels faculty to ever receive the prestigious recognition.
“Professor Fukami embodies a sustained commitment to excellence in all dimensions of faculty experience—research, teaching and service—since her initial appointment in 1983,” said Mary Clark, the University of Denver’s provost and executive vice chancellor. “Over the years, her work has been devoted to recognizing, rewarding and enhancing the scholarship and practice of teaching and learning in the fields of management and business.”
Vivek Choudhury, dean of the Daniels College of Business, echoed Clark’s sentiment.
“Cindi’s passion for her work, dedication to our students and to Daniels, and determination to make the world a better place, are second to none,” he said. “Daniels has been so fortunate to have her as a member of our family for over 40 years. On behalf of all members of the Daniels community, past and present, I want to thank her for her immeasurable contributions over the years, and congratulate her on receiving the recognition she more than deserves.”
Fukami’s lecture detailed her journey to and through academia, from her high school job at the Sears men’s suit department, to her studies at the University of Illinois and Northwestern University, to her faculty roles in Urbana-Champagne and Buffalo.
Cindi Fukami has taken more than 50 team-building sailing trips with EMBA students. (Photo by Emma Sharon)
“Too many people work in jobs or for people that take away from the quality of their lives,” Fukami said, explaining her interest in the field of management. “It has been my life’s passion to make a difference in that area.”
It wouldn’t have been possible, Fukami said, without the programs, pedagogy and leadership that elevated the education at the business school.
She outlined nine major accomplishments that illustrated her point: (1) an informal task force to reimagine business education; (2) an informal, transdisciplinary matrix system of “rows and columns”; (3) Bill Daniels’ involvement and supportive, ethics-focused philanthropy; (4) an integrated, team-taught MBA; (5) an MBA core curriculum, known as Compass, that prepared students for careers that did not yet exist; (6) team-building sailing trips and global immersions; (7) the MBA’s challenge-based education model, focused on experiential learning, teamwork and “sticky learning”; (8) courses around the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”; and (9) the practice of team teaching.
“In the end, it has all been about teams,” Fukami said. “We couldn’t have done any of this without each other. I conclude that being a university faculty member is a team sport, not an individual achievement.”
Her teammates in Maglione Hall—Daniels faculty and staff past and present, University administrators, and even DU luminary Dan Ritchie—gave her a standing ovation.
An award for a true scholar. It was an honor long overdue.