Teaching Experience:
Instructor: Applied Marketing Management, McMaster University 2025—Present
Instructor: Marketing Analytics (MBA), McMaster University 2024—Present
Instructor: Market Analytics, Michigan State University 2021—2023
Teaching Assistant: Market Analytics, Michigan State University 2020
Graduate Assistant: Econometrics II, Toronto Metropolitan University 2017
Graduate Assistant: Introductory Macroeconomics, Toronto Metropolitan University 2016
Teaching Philosophy:
My primary goal in any class is to teach students relevant skills that are guided by the curriculum but also sought out by the real world. I also aim to clearly communicate to students both how and why these skills are important, as learning without understanding the reason behind why it is taught can make learning challenging. Consequently, I build my teaching philosophy on pillars of strong communication, continuous examples, interactive learning and diversity.
First, I believe communication between an instructor and students is paramount. In particular, I believe one of the most important aspects of teaching is encouraging questions. However, regardless of encouragement, it is always intimidating to speak up in a classroom. Speaking from experience, it is easy to feel like the question an individual might have is trivial or a waste of time. Thus, I try hard to remind my students every lesson that I may not have explained the concept in a way that makes sense and for them to bring up whatever issues they have. I constantly encourage questions through any channel, via voice chat, office hours, email or Zoom message—and hope that the number of options also helps the student feel comfortable to ask.
Second, some concepts are taught which are intuitive to some but not to others. As such, I include real-life problems as illustrations after introducing the class material. I think that it is often challenging for students to learn conceptual ideas without also seeing how a concept can be applied. Thus, I place a large emphasis on why or how something matters in addition to teaching the content itself. For instance, I provide examples as to how curriculum tools such as linear regression are utilized by Facebook and Microsoft and show the students how these applications relate to the course content.
Third, the true application of classroom concepts is sometimes hard to comprehend. To give the students some "practical" experience, I make sure class projects are a key part of grading where students must consider problems encountered in the real world, work with datasets, and find solutions with code. In particular, I also aim to teach students skills which may give an advantage in the job market and are related to the content itself. For instance, I teach students how to conduct statistical analysis to solve business problems using R/RStudio as part of my course.
Lastly, I believe diversity in teaching styles is critical. Students come from all walks of life and learn in different manners. Thus, having a range of different evaluation criteria can help students find success. For example, some students may learn better through classical examinations whereas other students may be better at more applied work. To account for this, my courses evaluate students using a variety of methods in a single course including reading assignments or labs, exams and projects.
Teaching Awards and Fellowships:
Dr. S. J. Basu Teaching Award (2025).
Stanley Hollander Award for Teaching Excellence (2023).
Colleges’ Online Learning Academy (COLA) Fellow (2021).
Examples of Student Comments:
Fall 2025
"Thank you for just being you. You made most of the students feel comfortable in class to ask questions and to be okay to make mistakes and learn. There are several things I liked in the course including your teaching style, advanced application, coding based exam, learning to interpret the outcome, thinking like an analyst, you reiterating to reach out to you for scheduling meetings and going over the dataset. I like both the assignments and group project and honestly I do feel a bit confident in R now."
"Dr. Wu is personable, charismatic, and deeply invested in his student's success. There has not been a moment where I have not felt supported or heard -- a real treasure to the faculty. Michael, keep being genuine!"
"The level of support and accessibility was exceptional. He regularly offered office hours, responded quickly to emails, and always made time to meet if needed. His genuine investment in students' learning made a huge difference."
"This course was a bit of a learning curve for me but Professor Wu made it digestible and easier to understand. He always made an effort to answer questions and made himself available to provide assistance as needed. He always ensured that everyone had a good understanding of the material before moving on. I also liked that he provided practical examples to show the usefulness of the course. This course challenged me and allowed me to learn concepts that i didn't know before which I appreciate. Professor Wu also made coding in R slightly less scary and I even enjoyed it at times. Overall, you can tell that Professor Wu truly enjoys teaching this course and is committed to helping the students because he genuinely cares about them."
"The best way to improve this course is to not change it. This course is objectively hard. But 'dumbing down' the content to make it easier to learn for business students would NOT be an improvement. The difficulty feels good for you in the same way that broccoli is good for you, even if you don't like to eat it. In the course's current iteration, M733 enables me prove to myself that I am actually smart (capable to learn new things) and that I can learn through application instead of rote memorization. To best prepare for the future industry landscape, DeGroote needs more courses like M733 - and more instructors like Michael."
"Dr. Wu is impeccably organized and his lecture notes are succinct. Although M733 content leans more difficult than other MBA classes (particularly the conceptual/non-technical classes), the materials from M733 are easily digested when returned to over time, and with enough review, everything clicks. This would not be possible without Dr Wu's thoughtful approach to designing the course content and learning topic structure."
"There is a great blend of theoretical and practical takeaways from this course which is made possible by applying tools/packages in R Studio. For example, we're not just spending time talking about endogeneity, we're actually practicing it as business data analysts and learning how to code in the 'R' language in the process. This course really teaches you skills that are timely and useful and I would recommend all MBA students who are serious about statistical analysis to enroll in M733."
"Michael Wu is an amazing professor. He made the classes engaging and also made the content easy to understand and took his time explaining concepts to his students. He also encouraged friendly discussions between peer which made the class very interesting."
"I like the growth of the course my personality definitely changed and I became more confident speaking in presentation because the professor gives real comments that is used in real life."
"Continue what you do, because it's working!"
"Dr. Wu breathed life into a course that has a reputation for being dreadful and outdated. It was somewhat fun and was a course that I looked forward to."
"Discussions were really good for generating ideas to solve marketing cases and learning from other perspectives. The professor was really good at facilitating class discussions and provided hints instead of giving definite answers to marketing cases. This gave students multiple opportunities to arrive at their own answers to problems, creating a good learning experience."
Prior to Fall 2025
"The explanations of content in class was well done and the professor s facilitations of his lectures was great. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many practical application examples at the end of lectures and seeing how the coding concepts we just covered are actually used in real life; this practical component is something that is missing from the vast majority of courses I take and I would feel better about knowing how to use my education in the real world."
"The professor was always well-prepared, available for additional help outside of lecture, and really encouraged students to find solutions themselves and think harder about the problem at hand. He has a certain confidence in how he facilitated class that made me feel as though I could actually learn R coding, something that I was always intimidated by, and his ability to explain concepts made coding seem like a breeze. Although I have learned that coding is not cut out for me and even though I struggled with understanding the content the second class was done, Michael really cared about everyone s success in the course and in practical applications in life and for that I am thankful that he managed to push me out of my comfort zone and made me learn something new this semester. Thank you, Michael!!"
"This professor is the best I ve encountered during my MBA and should be considered a role model for others. He is dedicated to ensuring his students truly understand the material, provides clear assistance with assignments, maintains an excellent teaching pace, and demonstrates the business implications of the subject matter."
"Professor Wu is an amazing human being, mentor, and professor. This is his first time teaching an MBA cohort, and I must say that the way he breaks down complex content into a more simplified, easy-to-understand lingo echoes his capabilities and prowess as an instructor. He is very approachable, encourages students to reach out and ask for help, and is always available for a call or a friendly chat. He genuinely wants his students to succeed and inculcate an understand of analytics and marketing. He is also realistic - he knows that a 3-month course will not make us pros in the subject, but he is willing to invest time in helping us think more analytically and develop an intuition to look at data and think about it from an analytical sense. I looked forward to his every class - cz it was interesting and I was learning something new each class. Hands down, one of the best professors in the MBA in my 2 years here."
“Professor Wu did an outstanding job of providing feedback, responding to our questions via email and always being supportive to the class. I would email him a question and he would react initially giving hints on how to get to the answer and keep working with me to finally get the correct answer with the proper steps. He really cares for his students and is an amazing teacher. We are very lucky to have him.”
"Firstly, this course is the only course I ve taken so far where I don t really have the burden of being able to ask â€oestupid questions." I still remember in a class shortly after the term started, one of the students asked a question that sounded a bit ‘childish’, and someone else laughed at it, but Professor Wu seriously caught the question and said that it was actually a great question, and then he extended a valuable knowledge point from that question. I started to feel totally safe to interact in this class from that moment on."
"Because of this course, I tried emailing the professor for more study resources for the first time, I tried joining office hours for the first time, and I made the first appointment with a professor to go over my exam (and every Q&A from Professor Wu was really helpful!). I really appreciate this course, since it gave me the best learning experience so far, and more importantly, it gave me the courage to interact with my professors and classmates, which I think is even more valuable than the knowledge I learned in class."
"There are also many other aspects I deeply appreciate about this course. For instance, this is the only class I’ve taken where the Land Acknowledgement is consistently treated with sincerity. The professor has prepared many reference textbooks, but he will choose the version that is the easiest to understand on a certain knowledge point as the recommended reading material. Moreover, each lecture integrates real-world applications, using examples from industry research to illustrate the practical relevance of the topics we learn. Even as someone with no prior coding experience, I’ve come to see that these seemingly intimidating concepts are far more accessible than I had imagined. All in all, I truly like this course!"
“He uses real world examples constantly and has made me highly consider a career I previously had no interest in. This young man is the best instructor I've ever had and is by far better than any doctorate, 20+ years practicing, research-dignified professor I've had at this school."
"The GOAT of Marketing Professors and I don't even have my final mark back, still an amazing prof."
"Michael Wu was an incredible teacher! He really took the time to ensure all students really understood the content, and how to excel in marketing both in and out of the classroom. His expertise is everything quantitative and data analytics really helped taking marketing to the next level."
“Michael did a great job offering his help, and making himself accessible. He went over important points during class that helped reinforce materials, and I also thought the practice questions were useful.”
“The instructor was well prepared for every lecture. He was willing to help his students and made an effort to communicate with us.”
“Michael is the greatest TA I have ever seen. He is just really nice.”
“Wu was a cool dude who I could def get a brew with and talk about the future of data 12/10 guy wish him well.”
“Open to answering questions.”
“Well organized.”
“Very good at explaining the content and was very helpful responding to emails.”
“Very kind, enthusiastic, prepared and always willing to help.”
“He is nice.”
“Was very good explaining statistics through Zoom sessions and was always available after class to further explain.”
“Michael was very helpful, clear, prepared, and eager to help us succeed!”