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Inspiring Women
A study conducted at London Business School found that companies spend too little time developing women to be business leaders. Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at LBS, told Personneltoday.com that too few women in business are being given critical projects or the chance to go overseas and, in general, women are not being used to their full potential.
Gratton’s study of 62 companies found that just 30 percent of women reach senior levels of management and just 15 percent reach the executive ranks.
Through the LBS Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business, Gratton and colleagues have called on business to adopt new practices that help women advance. For more information, visit www.london.edu/womeninbusiness.html.
B School Challenges Itself to Diversify
To boost its minority enrollment, Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management has issued an internal a challenge: Babcock has announced that it wants it enrollment of black, Hispanic, American Indian, and multiracial students to comprise 20 percent of its student body by 2012. That would double the total for 2006-07.
“Minority recruitment is not just a minority issue,” said Associate Director of Admissions Kellie Sauls. “It’s a business issue.”
To help meet its ambitious goals, Babcock is engaged in a series of strategic initiatives—including seminars, work with consortia, and admissions outreach—to encourage individuals from underrepresented populations to consider graduate management education.
Growing Smaller to Grow Stronger
To increase the quality of each graduating class and raise its international visibility and stature, the University at Buffalo School of Management has decided to shrink its class size. David Fraiser, assistant dean at Buffalo and director of its MBA programs, said data to support the class downsizing came from recent research in preparation for the school’s reaccreditation. “We discovered that our peer programs were significantly smaller than we had been running,” he said. After considerable discussion, Buffalo decided to try to level that playing field by shrinking its MBA cohort from as many as 180 students to about 100, starting this fall. The rationale, Frasier said, is to “improve our overall profile and give ourselves a shot at getting more and better recognition.”
Jousting Entrepreneurs
From the University of Central Florida comes news about its latest Joust, an annual competition designed to foster entrepreneurship at the school and help UCF develop partnerships with local businesses.
UCF students participate in the competition by developing a business plan and then pitching their idea to a panel of area business leaders.
Winners of the 2007 Joust proposed a new real estate magazine for the Central Florida area targeted to residents interested in “renting to own” their homes. The idea won $5,000 and a year’s worth of support in a local technology incubator. A local company plans to launch the direct-mail magazine.
Meanwhile, the company that formed around the idea that won last year’s Joust, which develops compounds to help treat neurodegenerative diseases, has opened a lab near UCF and just moved its first pharmaceutical product into preclinical testing.
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