Last Friday, about 3,700 Twitter employees learned they lost their jobs after access was suspended to company-wide systems, like email and Slack.

Seven professors with the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business who are working on projects that show the promise of significant impact on experiential learning, are being given the funds to turn their proposals into reality. The new Teaching and Learning Innovation Grant Initiative is a multi-million dollar effort that is supporting nearly 90 academic programs throughout the university during this 2022-2023 academic year. It’s quite an accomplishment for Smith to have nearly 10 professors recognized by the program.

On April 28, the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business welcomed alums and supporters back to College Park for the inaugural celebration of the Dean’s Circle – a recognition society for individuals who have invested over $100,000 toward Maryland Smith in their lifetime. The event, expected to be held annually, convened guests for a group dinner where they heard from members of the Maryland Smith community about how they have been positively impacted by the group’s contributions.

What is the best pathway to unlock opportunities that will allow Americans to realize their dreams? And is that route lined with government programs or free enterprise? Those questions were at the center of a debate tour recently hosted by Maryland Smith’s Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets, in partnership with The Steamboat Institute.

Visa policies in the United States are holding immigrants back from starting new ventures and restricting their employment choices early in their careers, as well as shaping their entrepreneurship later, finds new research from Maryland Smith’s Rajshree Agarwal, director of the Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets.

“The reason we do research is for all those moments of true inspiration,” Maryland Smith’s Rajshree Agarwal told a group of undergraduate students last Thursday. “My PhD students inspire me as they showcase how entrepreneurship and innovation helps create solutions to the world’s thorniest challenges and unmet needs.”

Finding the right team is critical for a startup’s success and most aren’t taking the right approach, finds new Maryland Smith research. With the right strategy – a mix that has founders both liking each other due to shared values and experiences, and having the proper complementary skills and capabilities – startups can foster better team dynamics and have more success raising funds, being productive, and earning profits.

Kabir Mulchandani and Jessica Zeiser, representing the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business Executive MBA Program, are featured among the world’s ”Best and Brightest Executive MBAs in the Class of 2021” by Poets & Quants, the digital news outlet dedicated to global coverage of business education.

Editor’s note: For women with a science or engineering PhD, is academia a more equitable haven, compared to industry? Is it a place where gender gaps narrow in pay and promotions? In recent research published in Nature Biotechnology, Maryland Smith’s Rajshree Agarwal and Waverly Ding, together with Hitotsubashi University’s Atsushi Ohyama, explored those questions. Writing for the journal’s “Behind the Paper” series, they describe their findings. Below is an excerpt of what they wrote. By Rajshree Agarwal and Waverly Ding

It’s a tale as old as time – David vs Goliath. And this classic underdog story illustrates pioneers of the global mobile money industry as well, according to new research from Maryland Smith.