Background:
No wonder she’s fascinated by people’s conscious and subconscious motivations — Peck majored in psychology as an undergraduate student at Yale. It gives her a unique perspective when teaching investment ethics.
Expertise:
Corporate governance; mergers and acquisitions; debt and equity structure; leveraged buyouts; valuation; and investment ethics.
Teaching investment ethics:
"Our ultimate goal is to produce people who are highly ethical and professional in this area. The hope is for them to be aware of the kinds of conflicts they're going to face and to start to think about how they're going to react."
Pride point:
Marquette’s focus on ethics helped the Applied Investment Management program earn a coveted designation as a CFA Program Partner. It was the first undergraduate business program and one of only six in the world to win the honor.
Sarah Peck, Ph.D.
Sarah Peck, Ph.D., primarily teaches the black-and-white world of numbers and financial formulas. But her research — and her passion — resides in the gray areas where ethics and business collide.
Peck, an associate professor of finance, is curious about people’s conscious and subconscious motivations. That curiosity inspired more than 20 years of research on corporate governance and recently led her to create a class in investment ethics, believed to be the first in the nation.
Business ethics is getting more attention than ever in the wake of scandals at corporations such as Enron, WorldCom and, most recently, Hewlett-Packard.
“You hear the interviews these people give, and it’s clear that they didn’t sort of wake up and say, ‘I think I’m going to rob the company,’” says Peck, chair of Marquette’s Department of Finance. “They kind of convince themselves that what they’re doing really isn’t wrong initially, and then they go down that path. It’s part of being human, I think. People lie to themselves all the time.
“I like being at Marquette because it allows you to explore those issues, where you couldn’t do that at other institutions.”
Quick Facts About Marquette
| Identity: | Catholic, Jesuit, private |
| Established: | 1881 |
| Location: | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| Undergraduate: | 8,048 |
| Postgraduate: | 3,500 |
| Campus: | Urban, 90 acres |
| Athletics: | 14 NCAA Division I teams (Big East) |
| Colors: | Blue and Gold |
