College Park, Md. – September 13, 2011 – The undergraduate business program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is ranked No. 20 in the nation in the latest edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges,” published today. The Smith School placed 9th among public universities and also ranked highly in a number of business specialty categories.

For Maryland Terrapin quarterback Danny O’Brien, the start of the 2011 – 2012 academic year meant two things: Football is back in full swing and his first year as a Robert H. Smith School of Business student is officially underway.

College Park, Md. – Aug. 29, 2011 – The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business hosted its annual Freshman Fellows Orientation Program, sponsored by Ernst & Young. Staffed by representatives from both the Smith School and Ernst & Young, the day kicked off with group icebreakers and several songs performed by UMD a capella group, The Generics.

Freshmen in the University of Maryland’s College Park Scholars: Business, Society and the Economyprogram began their semester on August 29 by helping their community at two homeless shelters in Silver Spring. Scholars Service Day is an annual event in for students in each of the 11 Scholars programs offered by the university. Each group participates in individual service opportunities, helping the community while bonding with their new classmates.

Fulbright recipient and Smith alumna Kara Marston ’07 is venturing back to her roots to study the status of women in Armenia. Marston, who is half Armenian and nearly fluent in the language, is one of four 2011-12 Fulbright recipients at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. She will spend September to July abroad. “I’ve always been really tied to my roots,” Marston said of her decision to apply for a Fulbright scholarship to Armenia. “I went in 2007 and volunteered with a media company, and again in 2009 to volunteer again.”

Smith School senior Rebecca Hammer has been presented with two opportunities of a lifetime. Hammer, a finance and economics double major and Chinese language minor, was awarded two major international awards: a Fulbright Award to teach English in Taiwan and a Boren Scholarship to study Chinese intensively, either in the People’s Republic or Taiwan.

The Comcast Center was full of good cheer as the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business celebrated the commencement of approximately 780 undergrads, 360 MBAs, 19 EMBAs, and seven doctoral students on May 20, 2011.

The Smith community came together on May 5, 2011, to celebrate the achievements of top undergraduate students at the 11th annual Dean’s Undergraduate Awards Banquet. More than 60 students, faculty, staff and alumni enjoyed a banquet at Van Munching Hall. The much-anticipated annual celebration was the cap on the academic year and a final celebration before course finals and commencement.

Seniors Chris DeCaro, Tran Hoang and Anchal Gugliani ended their final undergraduate year in triumph. The trio competed in the Huffy Bike Competition, during which they created an extensive marketing campaign for the bike company and took home first place. They received $1,000 to donate to a charity of their choice and each student received a brand new bike and invaluable experience creating the campaign. “I thought it was cool to see a project go from beginning to end. We were given a problem and had to narrow it down to exactly how we wanted to solve it,” DeCaro said.

Two Smith School graduating seniors, Maseeh Roshan and Micheline Tocco, will be teaching—and dancing, and playing lacrosse--in Spain next year as winners of prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships (ETA) for 2011-12. The Fulbright Scholars program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Roshan, an accounting and finance double major, hopes to eventually focus on international contract law after his year in Spain.