Recent Articles

Veteran Enrollment Soars at the Smith School

Smith’s MBA veterans benefit from strong community, mentorship, and dedicated programs. Students Alexandra Pogany and Charles Castelly lead initiatives, while alumni Ryan McCarthy and Jim Bell credit Smith with transforming military experience into leadership and sustaining a vibrant veteran network.

Smith Welcomes Largest Freshman Class Ever

The Smith School welcomed its largest-ever freshman class of nearly 700, a 17% increase from last year. At convocation, leaders, alumni, and peers encouraged involvement, growth, and exploration. Smith also welcomed new MBA, master’s, and doctoral students across programs.

Remembering Smith Faculty Member Joe Perfetti

The Robert H. Smith School of Business mourns Professor Joe Perfetti, a beloved lecturer of finance for 17 years. Celebrated for his teaching excellence, executive education, and entrepreneurial ventures, Perfetti profoundly impacted students, colleagues, and corporate leaders worldwide.

Smith Research

3 Keys to Big Tech’s Success that Your Company Can Implement Now

Bobby Zhou’s research highlights three strategies any company can use to grow like tech giants: open to third parties, connect customers, and reach customers’ customers. These platformization methods harness network effects, building defensible, scalable, and innovative businesses across industries.

Top News

With Major Gift, Business School to Create Behavioral Finance Center

The Smith School will launch the H. Kent Baker Center for Behavioral Finance, supported by alumnus Baker. His gift funds faculty, research, and student opportunities, advancing global understanding of psychology’s role in financial decision-making.

Alumni

From Smith to Sparks: Alumnus Kicks Career Into Gear at Tesla

Prabuddh Gupta, MS in Supply Chain Management ’24, leveraged four years of production planning experience and Smith’s global focus to land a Production Planner role at Tesla. Hands-on projects, mentorship and adaptability fueled his growth and future leadership goals.

Poets & Quants Spotlights Smith’s Victor Su Among ‘MBAs to Watch’

Wei-Chi (Victor) Su, dual MBA/MS in Marketing Analytics student at UMD Smith, graduating December 2025, is named a Poets & Quants MBA to Watch. A former dancer turned aspiring product manager, he’s praised for leadership, curiosity, and collaboration.

Alumni

The View from the Top: Smith Alumnus Takes On CFO Role At Iconic Seattle Landmark

Jeff Wallace, MBA ’98, is CFO of the Space Needle and Chihuly Garden and Glass. His Smith MBA, leadership lessons, and diverse roles at Boeing, Starbucks, and LexisNexis shaped his career, leadership style, and passion for continuous learning.

Experiential / Reality-based Learning

SELF celebrates 10 years at UMD with a Return to the Residential Experience

The Snider Enterprise and Leadership Fellows (SELF) marked its 10th year by reviving its residential program at UMD’s Smith School. This summer, 68 students—including 15 in campus housing—reignited the “magic” of living, learning, and building entrepreneurial ventures together.

Terps Football Coach Infuses Leadership and Teamwork Insight in MiM Course

Maryland football coach Michael Locksley is co-teaching a revised “Leadership and Teamwork” course with professor Sheetal Singh in the Smith School’s Master of Science in Management Studies program, emphasizing experiential learning on leadership and teamwork for about 60 students.

Smith Research

Who’s Your Competition?

New research by P.K. Kannan, Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the Smith School, and Xian Gu, PhD ’19, applies CSIS to identify hotel competitors. Unlike traditional methods, CSIS efficiently pinpoints top rivals across diverse markets, revealing asymmetric influences, spatial variation, and broader applicability beyond hospitality.

Smith Research

Having an Egomaniac CFO Brings a Company Higher Valuations

The more narcissistic a company's CFO, the higher the analysts valuations of the firm, finds new research from the Smith School's Nick Seybert. He and his co-authors look at conference calls with analysts and find that narcissistic CFOs talk more, use euphemisms, and push back againtst — even threaten — pessimistic analysts.
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