Leadership starts with understanding people, keynote speaker Dana Ritzcovan ’93 told graduates on May 19, 2018, at the undergraduate commencement celebration for the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “We hire employees at organizations, yet human beings show up instead,” said Ritzcovan, group managing director and head of human resources for Global Wealth Management at UBS, a global financial services company.

Every graduating cohort has students who are shining stars, and it is with great fanfare that Victor Mullins, Associate Dean of the Undergraduate Program, celebrated them on May 3, 2018, at an annual awards banquet. The event also honored a few faculty members who were nominated by seniors and a retiring professor who has been a positive influence on the Undergraduate Program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Greg Rafal, an undergraduate program manager for the Center for Global Business at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business writes about a global consulting project that Smith students worked on during spring 2018.

Kristin LaRiviere, associate director in the undergraduate program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business writes about Smith seniors graduating from the Business Honors program.On April 26, 2018, the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business celebrated 24 outstanding seniors graduating from the highly-selective Smith Business Honors program.

Claudia Donnelly, a program manager in the undergraduate program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, writes about how undergraduate students are getting through the final weeks of the academic year.

Sixty-four sophomores in the Business, Society and the Economy (BSE) program at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business successfully completed the two-year College Park Scholars program on May 4, 2018. Over 800 College Park Scholars, mentors, and faculty attended the annual academic showcase where the BSE sophomores presented their semester-long Capstone projects. The event was held at the Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center.

Since 2006, finance professor David Kass has led students from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business on an annual trek to Omaha, Nebraska, to partake in the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting. This year he and Smith School finance professor Elinda Kiss tried something different. They hosted more than 100 students, faculty and staff for a “Watch & Learn” event on May 5, 2018, at Van Munching Hall.

Hundreds of volunteers packed more than 28,000 meals on April 24, 2018, as part of a weeklong Smith Pride initiative at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

The Smith Business Academy celebrated its five-year anniversary on April 27, 2018, by hosting the inaugural Men of Distinction Summit for high school students at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Students from Paint Branch, Roosevelt, Gaithersburg, Blake and MacGruder High Schools participated in the event, along with students from Ron Brown College Prep and the Literacy Lab in Washington D.C. Overall, more than 150 students attended the summit.

High school students from Prince George’s County applied hard skills in a soft drink case competition on April 20, 2018, at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. Each year, the Smith Undergraduate Program partners with the Alpha Kappa Psi Business Fraternity chapter at UMD to invite 100 local high school students to compete in a case competition that challenges their critical thinking and business skills.