Preparing Ethical MBAs. London Business School has teamed with the European Academy of Business in Society to create new case studies on corporate responsibility. The project is part of an ongoing effort to deepen business students’ understanding of their ethical responsibilities, and to help provide a framework for the study of ethics with the graduate management education curriculum.
New Business School? The Santa Cruz [California] Sentinel reports (March 25, 2007) growing interest in the possibility of the University of California at Santa Cruz starting a business school—perhaps not at the school’s home campus, but in California’s Silicon Valley. University planning documents show that this has been a consideration for many years, particularly after the launch in 1997 of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering, the school’s only existing professional school. A steering committee to plan the “UCSC School of Management” was formed last year, but many decisions need to be made before any such school becomes a reality.
Marketing: Women and the MBA. In the July 1, 2007, edition of the Boston Herald, Julie Strong, senior associate director of MBA admissions at the MIT Sloan School of Management, described a marketing approach that targets women applicants. Strong and coauthor Siobhan Kelleher identified the core problem this way: “the value of the [MBA] degree was not getting to prospective women applicants as effectively as it needed to.” The solution? A “modest but effective” brochure called “Six Stories,” in which six women with diverse backgrounds share their experiences in the Sloan MBA program. “MBA programs can more effectively connect to women if they first take the time to understand their needs and concerns,” the writers say, and should therefore take a more measured approach to evaluating how women perceive those programs.
Notable Quotes #1. “A country that aspires to have an economy that will be the third- or the second-largest in the world must have world-class infrastructure. The drumbeats of infrastructure are getting louder in India and the rumble is felt and heard all over the country. The desire for world-class infrastructure is not driven by government alone; increasingly it is demand-driven and community-driven. I am confident that within the next 10 years we will succeed in putting in place infrastructure in India that is equal to the best in the world.” Shri P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister for India, speaking June 28, 2007, at London Business School.
Notable Quotes #2. “B-schools and an MBA education continue to be important. If you look around, anything innovative on Wall Street has come from a b-school. But I am not saying that there are no improvements needed. We should look at imparting more than just the plain course skills. B-schools must build leadership skills along with domain knowledge. The way I look at it, an MBA is like a key, which you don’t really know when you may need it.” R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, interviewed February 27, 2007, in The Economic Times of India.
Helping India’s Women. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India has pledged to pay for graduate management degrees for 300 underprivileged girls…Also in India, HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has funded a simplified b-school for low-income rural women.
“The Varsity Sport of the Financial Mind.” CNBC is venturing into the game show arena with a new series, “Fast Money MBA Challenge.” Billed as “the varsity sport of the financial mind,” the show pits graduate business students in a contest to build an investment portfolio. The winning team will share a top prize of US$200,000. The show airs on Wednesdays through August.
Bottom of the Pyramid. The Aspen Institute reports that one finding from its most recent Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey is that more business schools are pioneering class work and curricula focused on “the bottom of the pyramid”: the billions of people worldwide who live in poverty. In the June edition of its monthly Closer Look at Business Education, the Institute suggests that business could simultaneously make a profit from serving this group and help improve their quality of life.
Applying Via Slide. Departing from text-only applications, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business has started to accept slides of information from prospective students. Applicants can now submit up to four slides about themselves with their application, which still requires two traditional essays. The new approach is designed to encourage creativity and use a form of communications regularly used in business. Student slides may contain pictures, graphs, text or whatever else the student wants to include. In a press release, Rose Martinelli, associate dean for student recruitment and admissions for the school's full-time MBA program, said that "there is no right or wrong way to satisfy the new requirement” and that “the important thing is that applicants can express themselves in ways they could not before in essay form.”
FOLLOWING THE MONEY: At the University of California-Irvine, the Paul Merage School of Business has received $6.6 million from the family foundation of Don Beall for the school’s Don Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship…Highly regarded investor John Neff, an alum of the University of Toledo, has given his alma mater $4 million. The money will endow the first faculty chair in the UT College of Business Administration…The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville will apply a $2 million grant from the Tyson Family Foundation, along with a matching gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, to endow a chair in “faith and spirituality in the workplace” in its Sam M. Walton College of Business…The North Carolina State School of Management has received $2 million from financial services giant BB&T to establish a center for the study of free markets…The University of Wyoming College of Business has started a $38 million renovation. The project will assemble all departments of the college, now in two different buildings, into one location, and includes construction of high-tech classrooms…The accounting department at the University of North Texas has received two gifts of $1 million each, one for endowment and another for an endowed chair.
NEW PROGRAMS: The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has teamed with research giant Gartner to offer an executive education program for chief information officers. Wharton also recently renewed its association with the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad…Said Business School at Oxford University is partnering with the Confederation of Indian Industry to create a research center, with sites in England and India, to investigate business practices and policy in India….Queen’s School of Business has launched Canada’s first master’s degree in global management, designed to prepare future executives for international success… Having recently committed to establishing a new campus in Dubai, French business school ESC Lille this month is offering a seminar on the principles of Islamic finance…To help entrepreneurs make business connections in China, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business is offering a late-summer “entrepreneurial immersion trip” to that country. Similarly, the Thunderbird School of Global Management sponsors an eight-week online program, “Learn How to Do Business in China”….The Universiteit van Amsterdam Business School has added new tracks in corporate social responsibility, finance, and entrepreneurship to its MBA curriculum…The University of East Anglia will offer an MBA in strategic carbon management, dubbed the world’s first such program, with a focus on managing the business of reduced carbon emissions…Iowa State University is starting a new PhD program in business and technology…D’Youville College, in Buffalo, New York, is starting a new flexible-format MBA program that will offer a mix of weekend, evening, and online classes…The colleges of business administration and the arts at California State University Long Beach are collaborating to offer a new joint MBA/MFA degree in theater management…The University of Kansas School of Business has teamed with Bayer Animal Health, a division of Bayer AG, to offer an MBA program tailored to veterinarians and other professionals in the animal health industry.