U-Md. Robert H. Smith School of Business Receives $1.5M from BB&T to Support Leadership, Ethics Education

College Park, Md. – March 11, 2010 – The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business today announced it will receive $1.5 million from the BB&T Foundation to support to business ethics and leadership programs. Awarded over a 10-year period, the gift will fund new curriculum and the BB&T Colloquium on Capitalism, Ethics and Leadership lecture series at the Smith School’s new Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change, which will launch in the fall of 2010.

“We are grateful for BB&T’s ongoing generous support and we’re excited to continue our strong partnership,” said G. “Anand” Anandalingam, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “Since the unraveling of the nation’s financial system, we’ve really come to recognize the need for better leadership education for current and future business leaders. This generation needs to understand the origins of our capitalist system from a historical and moral context in order to make good decisions that take all stakeholders into account.”

The BB&T gift will be instrumental in supporting Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change activities, with a mission to advance individual, team and organizational effectiveness. The center will focus on fostering synergies among research, education and practice to generate new knowledge about leadership, innovation and effective change in organizations. To meet these goals, the BB&T Colloquium on Capitalism, Ethics and Leadership will bring together students, faculty, staff, alumni and the public for a spring lecture series. The center will also use the BB&T gift to create undergraduate, MBA and executive education curriculum that will focus on the logic and morality of capitalism.

BB&T has been a strong supporter of the Smith School for nearly 15 years, investing in student scholarships, the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, and academic program initiatives such a the Undergraduate Fellows Program.