“Off the dome” is a human-interest series highlighting the interesting professors and faculty at Notre Dame. Suggest a guest by contacting aelshoff@nd.edu.
Dean Martijn Cremers welcomes us into his backyard, his grill ready to serve us students in his “Corporate Governance & Catholic Social Teaching” class this fall. At any other university, it might be unheard of for the dean of the business school to invite students to their home for an intimate barbecue; but at Notre Dame, I’m not entirely surprised.
In keeping with this spirit of charity towards students, Cremers has also agreed to be the first guest on my “Grabbing coffee with” series this semester. We opt for burgers and spicy Italian sausages instead of coffee and tea.
Freshman year, my impression of Cremers was very limited. All I knew – that he had a Dutch accent and loved “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai – came from a “Mendoza Open House” talk my parents attended Welcome Weekend. I’ve come to learn a great deal more, however, about the man in charge of the Mendoza College of Business (and his obsession with “The Wave”) during my three years here.
Cremers grew up in Boxmeer, a small town in the south of the Netherlands. Given his hometown’s aggressively secular nature, it might come as a surprise that he ended up at Notre Dame. It probably would have come as a surprise to a college-aged Cremers himself: “After I graduated with a master's in econometrics from the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I was very unsure about my next step. Upon the urging of my older brother, I decided to apply to study economics at a graduate school in the U.S., which I had never visited at that time. When I got a scholarship from New York University – which changed my life – I expected to be in New York for one year, and then go back to Amsterdam to work in consulting. But things changed quickly.”
A major turning point for the dean’s career discernment was taking an MBA course in advanced derivatives trading on a whim during his first semester. In 1997, it was a relatively up-and-coming area on Wall Street.
“The professor was amazing, and, after he got to know me a bit, saw something in me that I had not seriously considered yet; namely, to do a Ph.D in finance, rather than go to Wall Street to trade derivatives,” Cremers said. “Even when I was finishing my Ph.D, I wasn't sure yet [what to do], but the offer to join Yale University as an assistant professor of finance was an amazing opportunity. Once at Yale, I grew to love all aspects of being a professor, starting with teaching and doing research.”
When asked what eventually drew him to Notre Dame, the dean says that his faith and family life became increasingly important to him after teaching for ten years at Yale. “I was looking for a university where I could better integrate my faith and family life, a place where community and friendships with colleagues and students were paramount,” he explained.
The barbecue feels like the culmination of this dream: The dean leads us in prayer before we dig into our burgers, and later, my classmates and I play gaga ball on the trampoline with his eight-year-old son, Justin, while the rest of the group compares their favorite South Bend restaurants around the fire pit.
This integration of faith and family extends beyond the dean’s work-life balance to his vision for the business school, as well. One of the changes he’s made during his tenure has been switching Mendoza’s slogan from “Ask More of Business” to “Grow the Good in Business.” He explained what the revised slogan means to him: “We grow the good in business through what I call the ‘three Cs’: how we contribute, cooperate, and compete. We grow the good in business through how we contribute to society, how we serve others, starting with the products and services that fulfill genuine needs. We grow the good in business through how we coordinate with all stakeholders in solidarity, especially those with the greatest needs, starting with the team that you work with closely. We grow the good in business through how we compete with excellence, externally in the marketplace (of products and services, the labor market and the financial market), through a prior internal competition towards the best version of yourself, by the grace of God and the support of others.”
As my parents learned during my Welcome Weekend, Cremers tends to represent this vision with the “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai, using Mount Fuji as the guiding compass to ensure one’s goods contribute to society. The boats are the stakeholders coordinating in solidarity, and the wave is the competitive, external marketplace.
Interested in how the dean arrived at this inspiring vision, a bit outside-of-the-box for a business school, I asked him who the biggest influence in his life as been.
“Definitely my parents,” he said. “My father worked as a teacher in grade school, middle school and then high school and he taught me the importance of faith, hard work and perseverance and of the intellectual life, especially as cultivated in the humanities – literature, history, painting, music, architecture, religion, etc., etc. – and, finally, the love for teaching. My mother worked in a nursing home and always emphasized the importance of serving others, especially by her example.”
He found that being dean allows him to practice and pursue all of the values his parents ingrained in him, from a love of teaching to serving others: “I love serving as dean for three reasons. First, I love all aspects of being a professor and I love Notre Dame, so it is fulfilling to work towards a shared vision of how we can better serve our students, faculty and staff, how we can be more faithful to our mission, working towards what Mendoza can look like in five to 10 years. Second, I love how social the role is, to be part of a team, how I get to know and work with so many faculty, students, alumni, parents and Notre Dame supporters, with University and college leadership, whereas much of being a professor is more individual. Third, it is quite multifaceted, dynamic and challenging to serve as dean, which forces me to constantly learn, grow and work on my weaknesses, by the grace of God and the support of others.”
Seeing as he has found such a calling in his work, what advice would he give students discerning their post-graduate plans? He said to “Make sure you take time for discernment, about what your gifts are, how to develop those, and then share them with others. At Mendoza, we started an academic discernment course for first-year students [and have] also introduced courses at Mendoza that explore the moral purpose of business and the vocation of business. I also urge all students to consider doing a minor or second major in a discipline that is very different from your first major. Finally, reach out to the most generous and kind alumni in the world, the graduates of the University of Notre Dame. They are eager to help guide your first steps post-graduation as well.”
As Justin breaks out the s’mores (after pointedly reminding his dad that we hadn’t had dessert yet), I’m struck by how little of our professor’s lives us students really get to see from just inside the classroom. Deans of business schools feel like they are supposed to be aloof, too busy to give students advice or too professional for something as laid-back as this barbecue. But seeing Cremers at his home has given me a little glimpse into the surprising normalcy and humility of his personal life. To give readers the same feeling, I asked what people might be surprised to learn about him: “As I am Dutch, students may be surprised that I have become a very committed fan of the Notre Dame football team. I joined Notre Dame in 2012 and until then I had never even watched an American football game, and I did not even understand the complicated rules of football. That changed immediately after coming here. In my 13 football seasons since I arrived at Notre Dame, I have never missed a single minute of a single home football game (except one, when I had COVID). I love how Notre Dame athletics brings people together to cheer the Fighting Irish.”
And cheer them on this Saturday we will.
As the sun sets and it’s time for us to go home, we clean up our s’mores-sticks and lovingly let down Justin for a second round of gaga ball. I’m reminded of how lucky I am to be here at this school, learning from faculty that are much more than their titles: deans, maybe, but also mentors, parents and unapologetic football fans.
Allison Elshoff is a senior business analytics major with minors in the Hesburgh Program of Public Service and impact consulting. Her top three things to exist are hammocks, outfit repeating and mini spoons. You can reach her at aelshoff@nd.edu.
