College Park, Md. – January 21, 2009 – The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business invites innovative solutions to one of the 21st century’s most pressing concerns – how to allocate scarce resources to protect the massive amount of personal and sensitive data available on computer networks and online. The selection committee is now accepting essay submissions for the Gordon Prize in Managing Cybersecurity Resources.

Broadcast Dates: Jan. 22, 7:30 p.m. | Jan. 25, 7:30 a.m. | Jan. 26, 4:30 a.m.   A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a group of University of Maryland students is hoping it will be worth big money, too. The undergraduate students started a project call Shutters 4 Scholars that is showcasing photos of children in orphanages in Ukraine to help drive donations to support the orphans’ education.

The Babcock Graduate School of Management hosted the 19th Annual Wake Forest MBA Marketing Summit from February 5-7. But it was Smith's undergraduates who took a starring role, taking home first place at the Undergraduate Case Challenge. Mary Harms, lecturer in marketing, was the faculty mentor for the team.

Between the ages of 15 and 18, many orphans in Ukraine fall victim to drugs, prostitution and even suicide as they are forced to the leave the orphanage and transition into adulthood. But a group of University of Maryland undergraduates in theQUEST program at the Robert H. Smith School of Business is out to make a difference in those young lives. At the start of the fall 2008 semester they set out to figure out a way to help the orphans in Ukraine benefit from the opportunities of higher education.

College Park, Md. – December 11, 2008 – The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business today announced it has been selected as an inaugural “Changemaker Campus” in partnership with Ashoka, a non-profit network of social entrepreneurs. Ashoka chose the University of Maryland as one of four U.S. campuses to develop a model for future university-based initiatives that will promote innovation and social change.

The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship's Social Venture Consulting Program wrapped up a semester’s worth of consulting projects  as eight teams of Smith School students presented their consulting work to an audience of students and faculty on Dec. 3, 2008. Projects ranged from product development work, to outreach and social networking strategy. Each team presented a background on their client, their project findings, as well as the lessons they learned going forward.

A team of three students from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland competed against teams from the nation’s other top 23 business programs at the third annual Nationwide-Fisher Biz Quiz hosted on the campus of the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University on Nov. 15, 2008. The final rounds were held at WOSU public television’s production studios at Columbus' Center of Science and Industry (COSI) on Nov. 16.  

More than 250 people packed Van Munching Hall’s Frank Auditorium to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Smith School’s undergraduate Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) Honors Fellows Program and take part in the program’s annual Brumberger Innovation and Consulting Conference, held the evening of Dec. 4, 2008. Named for 2007 alumnus Matthew Brumberger whose financial support sustains conference, the event showcases student consulting projects for corporate and nonprofit clients, faculty, parents and peers. 

Mingfeng Lin, a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, is studying the value of online social networks and “social commerce” and he has won a handful of awards along the way, including the prestigious Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2009-10).

The Smith School’s new Business Plan Course is not just for entrepreneurs – it’s for everyone. BUSI 691 starting in the spring is a capstone course for the full-time MBA program that offers a great example of how the school is progressively pushing boundaries on the traditional MBA experience.