TeamMBA Recognizes Two Business Schools for Community Involvement and Social Responsibility

Business schools in the Netherlands and United States have been named co-recipients of the TeamMBA Award, presented annually to graduate management education programs whose efforts to give back to the community are deemed particularly noteworthy.

McLean, Va. (September 11, 2008)—Business schools in the Netherlands and United States have been named co-recipients of the TeamMBA Award, presented annually to graduate management education programs whose efforts to give back to the community are deemed particularly noteworthy. The winners were among 25 business schools from Asia, Europe and the United States that submitted entries for the award, which is sponsored by the Graduate Management Admission Council® (GMAC®).

The Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) at Erasmus University received the award in recognition of the school’s student-led RSM International Charity Foundation. The primary benefactor of the foundation, created to support the education of under-privileged children, is the Peduli Anak Foundation. The foundation focuses on combating poverty in Indonesia.

The other winner of the 2008 TeamMBA Award is the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Owen students established Project Pyramid, a project to use sustainable business initiatives to develop creative ways to deal with poverty around the world. Project Pyramid coordinated student involvement in 14 community service projects in a single year.

In addition to RSM and Owen, two other business schools were named finalists for the Team MBA Award. These schools are the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University. Fisher students used three community-service events to donate 3,500 volunteer hours and raise more than $18,000 for charities and nonprofit organizations. At Babcock, students created Project Nicaragua to support Nicaraguan small business owners.

The finalists and winners were chosen by an international panel of judges.

TeamMBA is an initiative by the Graduate Management Admission Council to encourage and support social responsibility and community engagement by graduate business schools and their students. Since TeamMBA was launched in 2005, thousands of students, staff and faculty from dozens of business schools have donated thousands of volunteer hours and raised more than $300,000 for charities and community organizations. For more information about TeamMBA, visit www.gmac.com/teammba.

Based in McLean, Va., GMAC (www.gmac.com) is a non-profit education association of leading graduate business schools worldwide. GMAC administers the Graduate Management Admission Test® (GMAT®), which is used by more than 4,000 graduate business programs around the world and remains the first and only global, standardized test specifically designed for graduate business and management programs. More information about the GMAT is at www.mba.com.