Steve Ballmer Will Teach At Stanford In The Fall, USC In The Spring

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Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

Steve Ballmer speaks at USC's commencement ceremony in May 2011.

When Steve Ballmer announced he was stepping down from Microsoft's board of directors, he cited a fall schedule that would "be hectic between teaching a new class and the start of the NBA season."

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Ballmer recently purchased the Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion, so that's what he means by the NBA season. However, Ballmer was mum on where and what he would be teaching.

It turns out Ballmer will teach an MBA class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in the fall, and a class at USC's Marshall School of Business in the spring.

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Helen Chang, assistant director of communications at Stanford's Business School, told us Ballmer will be working with faculty member Susan Athey for a strategic management course called "TRAMGT588: Leading organizations."

"We pair practitioners with academics scholars in teaching the MBA program, so Steve Ballmer and Susan Athey will be an example of that practitioner-scholar pairing," Chang told us.

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We've reached out to Susan Athey to learn more about how she plans to work alongside Ballmer for this course, and we'll update this story as soon as we learn more.

As for the spring semester, Ballmer will head to Los Angeles - closer to where his Clippers will be playing - and teach a course at University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. We reached out to the Marshall School, which declined to offer more details about Ballmer's class.

Ballmer, a Detroit native who joined Microsoft in 1980, led several divisions within Microsoft, including operations, operations systems development, sales, and support. In 2000, he as named CEO, replacing Bill Gates. He announced his resignation as CEO a year ago.

In his letter to CEO Satya Nadella on Tuesday, Ballmer said "I bleed Microsoft" and "I promise to support and encourage boldness by management in my role as a shareholder in any way I can."