E. Ralph Biggadike, a Columbia Business School faculty member in the Management Division for 16 years, died on August 17.
Most recently, Biggadike was Professor of Professional Practice and a Bernstein Faculty Leader for the School’s Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics. He was awarded the Singhvi Prize for Scholarship in the Classroom for his course Top Management Process and was twice selected as a finalist for the University’s Presidential Teaching Award.
Biggadike was also a significant contributor to the Executive Education Program as faculty director of the General Management Leadership Program, where he worked with international upper-level and senior-level executives from multiple industries for intensive two-week sessions.
“As a teacher and faculty member, Ralph was revered by students and colleagues alike,” said Dean Glenn Hubbard. “Reaching thousands of MBA, EMBA, and Executive Education students during his time at Columbia, Ralph consistently earned exceptional evaluations from his students who remember him for his rigorous classes which taught them to think and act like general managers.”
Before joining the School in 1996, Biggadike served as vice president for strategic management and group president for worldwide drug delivery systems at Becton Dickinson and Company. Prior to that, he was the Paul M. Hammaker Professor of Business Administration at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. Earlier in his career, Biggadike worked for British-American Industries Ltd., Malayan Tobacco Co and Rhodesia and Nyasaland Tobacco Co. Biggadike was born in 1937 in the United Kingdom and educated at the Wellingborough School.
After working in advertising, market research, and sales in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the Far East, Biggadike earned his MBA from the University of Virginia in management in 1972, winning multiple student awards. He subsequently earned his DBA from Harvard University in 1976, where his thesis on corporate new ventures was awarded the Richard D. Irwin prize for the Best Doctoral Dissertation.
Biggadike is survived by his wife, Maylin Biggadike, sons Oliver and Andrew Biggadike, daughter Ella Biggadike Harris, and his sister Lynne Biggadike. Donations may be made in his name to the New Jersey State Golf Association Caddie Scholarship Foundation, a scholarship for club caddies pursuing higher education, at 1700 Galloping Hill Road in Kenilworth, NJ 07033.
A memorial service will be held at St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church on Fairmount Road in Ridgewood, NJ, on Saturday, September 8, 2012 at 2 p.m.
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