In 2017, Richard Stuebi, long-time energy industry executive, entrepreneur and consultant, became a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Energy at Boston University, assisting faculty and students with energy-related research and entrepreneurial opportunities. In 2021, Stuebi also began lecturing on energy and sustainability at the university’s Questrom School of Business.

These two new experiences sparked a desire to cap his professional career of more than 35 years in the energy sector within the realm of academia.

“Initially, I thought that I would mainly be interested in the research aspect of professorship, with teaching as sort of a ‘necessary evil,’” Stuebi said. “But now having taught several MBA and undergraduate classes at Questrom, I learned that I quite enjoy teaching and the students have been very engaged. As a result, I have reshaped my ambition: in the classroom as well as with research, I am committed to advancing the frontier of understanding and educating the next generation of leaders who will combat climate change by decarbonizing the global energy sector.”

It was obvious, however, that becoming a professor at a research university would be very difficult to realize unless he had earned a Ph.D. 

As he began to investigate, because he wanted to maintain his consulting practice and clients, Stuebi looked at part-time doctorate programs tailored to mid-career professionals. Of the few that existed, he said, most of them seemed “watered down” to accommodate the time constraints of part-timers.

“I was concerned that any degree earned in such a program would be implicitly viewed with an ‘asterisk’ by the academic community, and I viewed it essential to obtain a degree that would demonstrate my commitment to academia and gain the credibility needed to have true impact in an academic setting,” Stuebi said. “Further into my search, it became clear that Pamplin’s Executive Ph.D. program was unique not only because of its high quality courses but because it requires students to conduct research for dissertations that will be judged with the same rigorous research standards that full-time Ph.D. students experience.”

Now in his third year of the program, Stuebi described the program’s structure of mixing full-time Ph.D. and Executive Ph.D. students into the same classes, alternating between online and in-person lectures (as permitted by COVID restrictions) principally at the Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church but also occasionally in Blacksburg, as ingenious. “As a result of the program’s structure, there is fundamentally no differentiation between the degrees and diplomas full-time and Executive Ph.D. students will receive.”

Most important, Stuebi said, is the support he has received from the Pamplin faculty, especially the chair of his dissertation committee, Dipankar Chakravarti, the founding Director of the Executive Ph.D. program. “Until I entered the program, I had no concept of going about identifying and framing a question worthy of academic research,” he said. “Dr. Chakravarti has been incredibly helpful in clarifying what constitutes good research, including how to apply what I learned in my coursework to an actual research effort in a tangible and practical way.”

Concentrating in marketing, Stuebi is interested in better understanding how consumers make decisions that have substantial environmental implications.

“Historically, the energy sector has been very focused on the supply side — optimizing operations and minimizing costs both for competitiveness and profitability. With that focus for over a century, relatively little insight has been accumulated on consumer behavior relative to energy choices, many of which have important ramifications on carbon emissions that drive climate change,” Stuebi said. “My research explores the antecedents that affect how consumers perceive and judge options that require tradeoffs between economic and environmental concerns, aiming to identify ‘nudges’ that marketers and policymakers might employ to induce choices that have lower environmental impact.”

Stuebi said that energy and sustainability have yet to receive much attention from either a curriculum or research standpoint in most business schools, so he recognizes his good fortune of working at Boston University where such a commitment has been made. Were he to accept an appointment somewhere other than Boston University, it would probably also imply creating/launching efforts to establish sustainable energy as a dedicated priority within the institution.

“By the time I have completed the Executive Ph.D. program, I am optimistic that more universities will be up to the challenges posed by the energy transition we confront as a society,” he said. “I am confident that my Pamplin Ph.D. degree will convey to those institutions that I will be up to the challenge of leading their energy-related research projects and educational programs.”