Professors by Day, Partners for Life feat. Professor Lee Ann Butler & Professor Alex Butler

Owl Have You Know

Today’s guests bring a unique blend of expertise and personal connection to the show. Lee Ann Butler and Alex Butler are not only esteemed faculty at Rice Business, but also a married couple!

Lee Ann Butler, a senior lecturer in management, has been teaching business law and related courses since 2001, joining Rice in 2010. She also served as the former academic director for the Online MBA program, MBA@Rice.

Alex Butler, the Jesse H. Jones Professor of Finance, specializes in empirical corporate finance, financial institutions and markets. His research dives deep into how firms, governments and individuals navigate external financing, with recent work examining racial disparities in the auto loan market. He was instrumental in launching Rice Business's undergraduate business major and previously served as the director of undergraduate programs.

Together, with host Maya Pomroy ’22, the Butlers share insights from their nearly three-decades-long academic journeys and personal lives. Lee Ann reflects on her passion for business law and the ethical challenges facing today's business leaders, while Alex highlights his findings in consumer finance. They also discuss the undergraduate business major at Rice, offer perspectives on teaching during uncertain times and explore how their partnership shapes their professional lives.

Episode Guide:
00:57 How The Butler’s Met: A Love Story in a Bar

01:38 Lee Ann's Journey from Litigator to Lecturer

04:19 Alex's Path to Finance and Academia

09:13 Launching the Undergraduate Business Program at Rice

12:36 Teaching Experiences and Student Interactions

15:20 Working Together as a Married Couple

18:56 Alex's Research on Racial Disparities in Auto Loans

23:32 Higher Interest Rates for Minorities

26:20 Impact of Anti-Discrimination Policies

28:39 Legal and Ethical Challenges in Business

33:22 Teaching in Uncertain Times

36:19 Future of Rice’s Undergraduate Business Major & Rice Business

42:46 Reflections and Words of Wisdom

Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

On the ethical challenges that business leaders face today

30:30: [Maya Pomroy]: What are some of the most critical legal or ethical challenges that business leaders face today? Because that's something that you're preparing this generation of leaders to tackle.

30:41: [Lee Ann Butler]: Well, I think the ethical challenges come every day, and probably the most difficult bit is when we just don't realize it's an ethical dilemma that's in front of us, right? And we tend to think of ourselves—everyone thinks of themselves as an ethical person: I don't need to worry about this because I'm a good person, and I will do the right thing. But when we take the time to actually systematically go through it in a logical way, I think not only what does my ethical framework tell me is right and wrong in the situation, but how might others view it? 'Cause not everyone—not everyone has the same framework as me or anyone else.

Surprising lessons learned from being educators at Rice

13:38 [Alex Butler] Several years ago, we ran an experimental course where faculty from four different functional areas got together, all of whom were going to teach their discipline, but along the theme of decision-making. And so we had someone from one group who's going to think about decision-making in teams, one-person decision-making, as students as far as how personal-psychological biases affect your decisions. One person doing game theory and I doing decision-making with data, so I learned a few things in that, one of which was. What a great place to work where someone can have this bonkers idea of let's come at decision-making from four different ways, all of us with our own strange perspectives, and deliver that as a course to the students and have the administration be like, yeah, man, let's do that. That sounds awesome.

What makes Rice special from an educator's perspective

08:35: It comes down to A: the students, right? That is my interaction. Most of the time, they are phenomenal. They are here to learn, and they have that kind of hunger that's amazing. I really enjoy teaching in the MBA program because they come with so much work experience, and I learn something every single class that I teach. Hopefully, they learn a lot from me, but I am absolutely learning a lot from them each time, too. But we also have wonderful support and administration here, which is not always the case at every school. But we have the whole package, which is just a joy to work here.

Show Links:

• Transcript
  
  

Guest Profiles:

• Lee Ann E. Butler | Rice Business
• Alexander Butler | Rice Business
• Racial Disparities in the Auto Loan Market | The Review of Financial Studies | Oxford Academic

Check out this episode featuring Professor Anastasia Zavyalova here: https://business.rice.edu/owlhaveyouknow/season-3-episode-10