A team of undergraduates at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, has made it to the final round in General Motors “GM&U” Marketing Challenge. Drexel University and Syracuse University are the other two finalists in the case competition. The challenge: create an integrated marketing communications plan for GM’s new College Discount Program.

Over 100 Smith undergraduate students and several faculty members -- Gary Bulmash, Hugh Turner, Elinda Kiss, and Mary Harms -- recently traveled to New York City for two days of networking with alumni, company visits and sightseeing. Members of the Smith Undergraduate Student Association (SUSA) mingled with over 50 local alumni at a reception in Times Square on Thursday evening.

On October 19, 2009, the Robert H. Smith School of Business welcomed Marissa Levin ‘89, CEO of Information Experts, an integrated communications firm offering a broad range of strategic and tactical marketing and internal communications services across digital and print media.

The controversy over executive compensation practices has generated a lot of heated conversations in the media and around the water cooler. On November 2, under the lights of camera crews from C-span, CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg, the Smith School’s new Center for Financial Policy shone a spotlight on this controversial issue at its first roundtable discussion, “Executive Compensation—Practices and Reform.” The event featured keynote speaker Kenneth Feinberg, a well-known lawyer and mediator recently appointed to be the Obama administration’s special master for compensation.

The minds of teachers, researchers and industry professionals alike came together as they discussed solutions to the current problems surrounding the issue of cybersecurity at the 6th Annual Cybersecurity Forum at the Robert H. Smith School of Business on Oct. 28, 2009.

College Park, Md. – October 26, 2009 – The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business today announced the winners of its third annual Mergers & Acquisitions Competition, held October 22-23. The event, organized by Smith’s MBA Finance Association, challenged 10 teams of MBA students from leading business schools to craft and present M&A pitches to a panel of executive and faculty judges. The student team from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University won the $5,000 first prize.

College Park, Md. – October 12, 2009 — The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business will launch a new Center for Financial Policy on Nov. 2 with a Roundtable on Executive Compensation event in Washington, D.C. Kenneth Feinberg, Special Master for Compensation of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, will keynote the event, which will explore executive compensation practices and policy reforms.

When you think of on-campus dining, you probably envision plastic trays, a long buffet, and an endless supply of chocolate milk. On September 22, 2009, however, undergraduate students in the Robert H. Smith School of Business Finance Fellows program were gathered in Van Munching Hall’s Executive Meeting Room in a different context—a formal networking dinner with finance professionals. In addition to an evening with opportunities to connect with professionals in the finance industry, students were dressed in business formal and treated to a catered sit-down dinner.  

The Robert H. Smith School of Business hosted a case interview workshop featuring nationally recognized case interview guru Marc Cosentino in Van Munching Hall, Sept. 8-11, 2009. Case questions are typically business related challenges presented by an interviewer to gauge how a candidate breaks down and solves the problem during a job interview.

This fall, second-year full-time MBA students at the Robert H. Smith School of Business returned to campus after a summer of making recommendations and presentations to C-level executives and delivering value while leveraging the skills and knowledge they developed over the previous year.