Recently, finance professor Aaron Brown announced that he is leaving the Sy Syms School of Business and that he will be moving to Israel next year. While Brown did not rule out the possibility of returning to SSSB as an adjunct professor and teaching on a part-time basis at a later date, he cited burnout as the impetus behind his decision.

Brown feels that it is in the best interests of him and his students to end his twelve-year association with SSSB. "I don't think that I have been fair," he told The Commentator. "[In the past year] I've been involved in outside endeavors, and I just have not been able to give them [the students] the attention. I felt that I was short-changing people."

Brown attributes his flagging energy to teaching too many classes; as a full-time Syms professor, he instructs five classes per semester. Syms students speculate that Brown's outside obligations -- in March of 2000 he launched eRaider.com, a mutual fund and website -- in addition to serving his post as full-time professor, have simply tired him out.

After the conclusion of this semester, Brown intends to move to Israel with his family. However, Brown would not rule out the possibility of returning to SSSB in the near future. "I am going to Israel in June, and I have not bought a return ticket," he revealed. "However, I may still teach in the spring [semester], [but] right now everything is up in the air. I do not know how long I will be away, it could be just next semester, but it could be more."

While Brown has announced only recently his intention to move to Israel this coming June, he informed Syms Associate Dean Ira Jaskoll over a month ago that he wished to limit his teaching to a part-time basis. Jaskoll, in response, initiated a search for a new part-time teacher. In light of Brown's recent revelation, however, Syms must now shift focus and search for a full-time replacement. "We began looking for a teacher some time ago, and we hope to announce shortly that we have found a replacement for Professor Brown," asserted Jaskoll.

Many students do not believe that it will be easy to replace a professor like Brown, who was widely considered to be the most popular professor in SSSB. "He is without question the best teacher that I have ever had. He will not be hard to replace; he will be nothing short of impossible to replace. I eagerly await his return to teaching at the Sy Syms School of Business," SSSB junior Mikey Davis commented.

Other students questioned the future of the business school. One student, an accounting major in his junior year, worried that "with Brown and the other teachers leaving, Sy Syms is going to fall apart." Jaskoll, however, remains confident that "the quality of SSSB will not change."

While Brown acknowledged that Syms' finance department has "always been loosely organized and taught by adjuncts," he insisted that there was a simple way to improve it, "I have always told them we need to hire more full-time professors." Jaskoll conceded that SSSB would like to hire more teachers, "but [right now] the priority is on replacing Brown. It is not a simple process to hire more teachers, we need to get budgetary approval and [in the past] we have gotten that through. But it takes time."

SSSB Student Council President Dorian Levy is confident that Syms will be able to hire "capable and energetic professors that will work well with the student body." Levy pointed to the reputation of the student body as a key in attracting the professors, and emphasized his "utmost faith in [University Vice President of Academic Affairs] Dr. Lowengrub's ability to determine which teachers to hire."

Brown first came to Syms as an adjunct professor in Fall 1989, while he was still working on Wall Street; within a few years, the popular instructor was teaching full time. Three years ago, Brown was named full professor. Brown is proud of the growth that SSSB has undergone in the twelve years that he has taught in the institution, from a nascent school with a small enrollment, to a burgeoning business school. However, he stresses the importance of keeping class sizes small.

"When I first started teaching, our introductory courses had an enrollment of twelve students, and our advanced classes had five or six students, which made them almost like seminars," said Brown. In comparison, introductory courses nowadays boast a typical enrollment of close to thirty students.

The increase in class size is another factor that, Brown claims, contributed to his burnout. "I teach five courses in a semester and in each class there are thirty students. That means that I have to get to know 150 new students a semester - I just cannot do that," added Brown, "it's too much."