After being elected as president of the Smith School’s MBA Association, Alex Kouts, MBA Candidate 2009, took a trip out to San Francisco to take part in the President's Forum at the Graduate Business Conference at Berkeley this spring. During this annual event incoming and outgoing presidents of each MBA Association from the top 50 MBA programs globally come together. One of the tasks that is accomplished during this meeting is the election of the chairman of the forum for the next year.

April was recognized as Sustainability Month this year at campuses around the country. The Smith School held a number of events for both the students and community to participate in that focused on sustainability and going green in recognition of the month. The events were focused around not only bringing about awareness of environmental issues to participants they were also designed to show how individuals can build companies around sustainability and the environment.

A team of four Smith second-year MBAs traveled to the University of Wisconsin in Madison on April 16-18, 2008 to compete in the CIBER (Center for International Business Education and Research) International Business Case Competition. The team—Dan Bresette, Ike Kim, Liubov Luzhnova, and Sam Tang—walked away with a second place finish out of 11 competing schools. Ike Kim was also awarded the individual best presenter award, which made him one of three winners of this award.

Over 100 Smith community members and employers attended the 15th Annual William D. Bradford Minority Awards Banquet on April 2, 2008 at the Samuel Riggs Alumni Center. Sponsored by the Black MBA Association and the Hispanic MBA Association, the event aims to celebrate excellence in the African American and Hispanic communities at Smith. Dr. William Bradford, a professor of finance at the University of Maryland from 1980 to 1994, initiated the first banquet in 1994.

Second-year MBA student Tekisha Harvey, first-year MBA student Corinne Talley-Hobbs and Tiffany Grossman present on the dos and don’ts of public speaking.

On Friday, Feb. 29, 2008 Smith first-year MBA students were once again treated to a presentation from Vik Khanna, owner of Galileo Health Partners LLC, a health consulting firm that provides innovative and creative consulting services to a wide range of corporate and government clients. Khanna, who spoke at MBA orientation in August, returned to the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business to hold two sessions on the topic of Organizational Leadership on Fitness.

On Feb. 26, 2008, the MBA Finance Association of the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland hosted a panel discussion on the current state of the U.S. economy. About 30 MBA students gathered to listen to two panelists from the department of logistics, business, and public policy, Peter Morici, professor of logistics, business and public policy, and Curt Grimm, Dean's Professor of Supply Chain and Strategy. The students were invited to prepare questions for Morici and Grimm and engage them in discussion about the challenges facing today's economy.

On Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland welcomed S. Tien Wong, CEO of Opus8 and entrepreneur-in-residence at Smith, to its MBA Speaker Series program. Wong is the chairman of Opus8, a private investment firm based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on mid-market buyouts and venture capital. Opus8's investment focus is on firms in North America and China that deal with business process outsourcing, call centers and customer relationship management, and marketing services.

Each year every chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) in the United States runs a regional case competition for the MBA programs in the area. This year the D.C. chapter of the ACG held their competition Feb. 4-11, 2008. The competition places the student teams in the role of a financial investor. This year’s case was centered around two fictional companies that were named GrowCo and MarginCo. The industry that they operated in was aerospace & defense.

The first Graduate Marketing Association (GMA) event of the semester kicked off on Feb. 13, 2008 in Van Munching Hall with a presentation from Anthony Pappas, president and creative director of the Pappas Group. Around 40 MBA students and faculty attended the presentation, entitled "The Business of Branding: How Creative Efforts Meet Corporate Goals."