Faculty and staff of the Smith School gathered last Friday in the grand atrium of Van Munching Hall to celebrate the season and to mark the end of another great semester at Smith. The annual holiday party provided a great opportunity for newer faculty and staff to get to know the rest of us a little bit better, and for everyone to reflect on the school’s accomplishments over the past several months.

Driving Innovation in Business Education
The school kicked off the semester with a groundbreaking technology initiative made possible through a partnership with Nextel. All of the school’s full-time MBA students, along with many members of the faculty and staff were provided with BlackBerry wireless hand-held devices to provide them with always-on instant communications and to help the school continue its focus on innovation in business education.

Also this semester, the school’s Supply Chain Management Center launched an innovative and comprehensive online course to provide a practical blueprint for building, implementing, and sustaining supply chains in today’s volatile and rapidly changing environment. The course is offered to members of the Council of Logistics Management and other industry professionals. And the Smith School teamed up with Reuters to deliver the first-ever external certification program for Reuters 3000 Xtra, the company’s high-speed, high-performance information service for finance professionals.

Research for the Digital Economy
A Smith School-based research project to learn from the failures of the dot-com boom and bust received a $480 million boost thanks to a grant from the Library of Congress. Researchers, led by David Kirsch, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, will use the grant to develop a digital repository to house business records and other materials collected through the Business Plan Archive (BPA), which was launched in 2002. The BPA is a Web portal located at www.businessplanarchive.org and contains business plans, marketing plans, technical plans, venture presentations, and other business documents from more than 2,000 failed and successful Internet start-ups.

Also this semester, a team of researchers that includes Louiqa Raschid, professor of information systems, was awarded a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation for data management research for the life sciences. Raschid’s research objective is to develop new data modeling and data integration tools that will make scientists and biologists more effective and efficient as they navigate through vast amounts of Web-accessible information.

Successful Faculty Recruitment
The Smith School welcomed 12 new faculty members this semester, as it continued its course to becoming one of the nation's top management education and research institutions. With the fulfillment of our faculty appointment goals, Smith creates and shares knowledge that advances business practice and prepares our students and business and government partners to succeed in a dynamic, technology-powered marketplace.

Smith’s Global Reach
The Smith School continued to expand its international footprint this semester, announcing three new programs in China. Traveling in China with Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich in October, Dean Howard Frank announced a custom Smith MBA program for Otis Elevator China and the launch of a Smith EMBA program in Shanghai, the school’s second EMBA program in China. And in November, the Smith School announced a partnership with ChinaCast Communications Holdings Limited, a leading provider of e-learning solutions in China. The partnership will enable Smith to deliver business education courses throughout China, beyond its largest cities.

Clearly this community of leaders for the digital economy had a lot to celebrate at this year’s holiday party, and much to look forward to in the new year ahead!

▓ Jeff Heebner, Marketing Communications

Welcome New Employees!

►Deborah Frey, Accounting Associate, Office of Administration