Find Your Voice
By Stephen P. D'Arcy

How are Gary Dean, Rick Gorvett, Shaun Wang and I unique among casualty actuaries? If your first answer is that we are all dashingly handsome, I would have to question your judgment, at least regarding some of us. If you answered that we are all dedicated volunteers—Gary as chair of the Task Force on Publications, who just completed a three-year term on the CAS Board of Directors; Rick as chair of the Committee on Review of Papers; Shaun as a leading member of many committees including the Joint CAS/SOA Committee for the Enterprise Risk Management Symposium; and me as the one responsible for these articles—that is true, but that hardly makes us different from many other CAS members. What does make us unique is that we are all Fellows of the CAS who have had significant experience in the insurance industry but are now full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty members at universities. Gary was vice president and actuary at Safeco before joining Ball State; Rick held a number of positions within the insurance industry, most recently as senior vice president at Zurich North America, before returning to the University of Illinois; Shaun was the group research director at SCOR before going to Georgia State; and I was the actuary at CUMIS Insurance Society before beginning my academic career at Illinois. Our primary job now is to teach the next generation of students and we all seem to do this exceedingly well. In fact, it appears that casualty actuaries have a propensity for becoming excellent teachers, so I would like to encourage more members of the CAS to consider teaching as a profession.

Why do casualty actuaries make such good teachers? Gary Dean, who is able to get exceptional ratings even in calculus classes, says that casualty actuaries are used to communicating complex ideas and have a knack for dealing with practical problems that appeal to, and can be understood by, students much better than the common examples used by other professors. Rick Gorvett, who is consistently listed as one of the top professors at the University of Illinois, uses his extensive contacts within the industry to bring speakers and practical problems into the classroom. Shaun states that his students really appreciate it when he bridges the gap between practitioners and the university. My students use actual policy forms to determine if lifelike events would be covered, and for how much. Students understand the subjects better when they are taught using realistic examples. The characteristics that make some people good casualty actuaries would also make them good teachers.

Now the sales pitch. Although the actuarial profession is correctly considered to be one of the top professions, I think being a professor is even better. Why? When we talk, people listen, rooms full of people, and they take notes and try to learn what we say. This is a great responsibility, but also can be very rewarding. When we do it right, we get positive feedback from our students. The four of us all receive comments such as:

• Best math professor ever!
• Excellent course. Excellent teacher. Would want to take another class with him.
• This has been, by far, my favorite course that I have taken here at the university.
• Your class was the most influential class I took. Your excitement in the classroom opened my eyes up to a career that I otherwise would not have considered and have now begun because of you.
• I love Prof. Dean's teaching. Couldn't have asked for a better professor.
• You rock!

Equally rewarding is when we meet our students many years later and they tell us how something we taught has helped them in their careers, or that our encouragement made a difference in their success. These comments far exceed any reward that we could gain in business.

Teaching seems to keep us young. Dealing with 18-22-year-olds, who have their own culture and view of the world, requires us to stay current. Every year a new batch of eager scholars descends on our campuses, bringing an enthusiasm that is catching. Our ongoing relationship with a perpetually young and vibrant group of students seems also to keep faculty members young, both in health and in attitude, in comparison with other professions. College towns are also great places to live, with their athletics, theater, and musical programs providing a constant source of relatively inexpensive entertainment.

In addition to teaching, many of us are also expected to create knowledge by publishing original research. Professors select their own research agenda, unlike most actuaries who work on projects assigned by employers or clients. In many ways our research is similar to the work done by many research actuaries, but one key difference is that we publish our work, creating a permanent record that can be read by others and can serve as a foundation for additional advances. The number of times our papers are cited in the literature (citation counts), which are important for our evaluations, also measure how useful our work has been within our fields. Seeing our work cited, perhaps many years after publication, demonstrates that our work mattered and is still considered useful. I simply never got the same feeling about company loss reserve analyses or rate filings I performed.

Tenure is another benefit of an academic career. Although challenging to gain, once achieved tenure guarantees job stability that is unavailable within the business community. Tenured professors simply do not have to worry about relocating themselves, and their families due to corporate downsizing or mergers. This may seem like an insignificant benefit most of the time, but not when you deal with friends who have been displaced.

I hope by now that I have gotten you interested in teaching. Now, how to get started. There are several ways you can become a teacher. If you are early in your career, and up for the challenge of another degree, I would encourage you to enroll in a Ph.D. program in math or finance. A Ph.D. is generally considered essential for an academic career. Although returning to academia after working as an actuary can be difficult, there are professors who will try to smooth that transition. After making this transition myself, I have been able to get two other experienced actuaries through the program at Illinois, and would welcome the opportunity to mentor others. After completing your degree, which generally takes about four years (three years if you already have a masters), you would take a research-oriented or teaching-oriented position. At a research university, the teaching load is lighter (one to two courses per semester) but the expectations for research more intensive. For a teaching-oriented position, the teaching load is heavier (three to four courses per semester), but the research expectations considerably lower. The tenure decision is commonly made in your sixth year at an institution. During that time, publish or perish is a reality. If nothing else, this threat does serve as an effective motivator for doing research.

An alternative for someone who is further along in a career and not interested in another degree would be to move into an academic position after retirement. Some schools consider a Fellowship to be somewhat similar to a Ph.D., and would hire a credentialed actuary as a teacher and an advisor to actuarial science students. For a temporary appointment
such as this, not having a Ph.D. would be less of a disadvantage since you would not be seeking a tenured position. Another option would be to teach for a semester, or longer, in a country where the actuarial profession is developing. Here on-the-job experience would be more valuable than academic credentials, and you have the chance to help the industry develop in that nation.

An alternative that doesn't require you to quit your day job would be to teach one course every semester, or once a year, at a nearby university or college. Actuaries are well qualified to teach math, risk management or insurance courses, or any other specialties in which they have expertise. Academic institutions hire an inordinate number of adjunct professors, more when finances are strained such as they are now, to cover classes the full time staff can't handle. Adjuncts are not paid much, and rarely have much of a voice in departmental policies, but this still provides an opportunity to share your knowledge with students and help them gain an understanding of, and appreciation for, our profession.

More opportunities. The CAS runs international educational programs in countries where the actuarial profession is developing. Spend a week or two teaching what you do to budding actuaries in other countries. The feeling of accomplishment is immense, according to those who have done this. For a shorter commitment, offer to guest lecture in classes at your alma mater, a convenient school, or at a college or university you want to visit, perhaps to recruit students. This is a one-day activity, and gives you the chance to see if you do enjoy the classroom environment and to learn whether you have a talent for this work. Several of my colleagues began their relationship with the University of Illinois in just this way.

If you are a casualty actuary and you like helping people understand things, you would probably make an excellent teacher. You may even enjoy being a professor more than doing actuarial work within a company or consulting firm. I would like to suggest that you try it and see if you do, indeed, like it. If you have any questions on an academic career, please contact any of us; we would be delighted to see our ranks grow in number.

[In case you haven't at least skimmed Stephen Covey's latest accomplishment while browsing in a bookstore, the title of this article is derived from his new book, The 8^th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness.]