January 11, 2011: MEDIA ALERT UMD Marketing Expert Says Verizon’s Success with iPhone Will Depend on Performance P.K. Kannan, Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Marketing Science and Chair, Department of Marketing at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, reacts to Verizon Wireless’ announcement today that they will now carry Apple’s iPhone. He says the carrier’s success will depend on its network performance.

The Smith School’s marketing department combines leading scholars who have had profound influence on the discipline with young scholars showing great promise and potential for impact. Two faculty members recently received major awards.

Smith alumnus Bob Johnson, Chief Service Officer of Sprint Nextel and pioneer of the wireless industry, helped his company turn around its customer satisfaction ratings by focusing on solving customers' issues on the very first phone call, according to a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal.

Dominic Crapuchettes, MBA ’04, bet his future on North Star Games, a board game company he created in 2004 with Satish Pillalamarri, MBA ’04. Now you can find his games — Wits & Wagers, Say Anything and Cluzzle — in your neighborhood retail stores.

Tulkoff Food Products Inc. has been a Baltimore business since the 1930s and is particularly famous for its horseradish products. But processing two million pounds of raw horseradish each year has produced a big problem for the company. The process used to clean the roots generates 100,000 pounds of horseradish peels and 2.2 million gallons of dirty water annually.

College Park, Md. – December 7, 2010 – The Center for Financial Policy at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and the Maryland Bankers Association are partnering to deliver a Bank Director Training Program.

On Dec. 15, 2010, in Washington, D.C., the Center for Financial Policy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and the Professional Risk Management International Association (PRMIA) jointly hosted the inaugural Chief Risk Officer Speaker Series.

CEO@Smith Speaker Series Dick Cass, President, Baltimore RavensTuesday, November 30, 2010, 5:30 - 7 p.m.Frank Auditorium, Van Munching HallUniversity of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

College Park, Md. – November 15, 2010 – Ritu Agarwal, professor and Dean’s Chair of Information Systems at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, was named editor-in-chief of Information Systems Research. She will assume her role January 1, 2011.

A group of student entrepreneurs got an unusual opportunity to present their big ideas to an audience of University of Maryland Trustees and the university’s new president, Dr. Wallace Loh, as the Smith School’s weekly Pitch Dingman competition went to the Riggs Alumni Center on Friday, October 29.