College Park, Md. October 11, 2007 North Star Games, a Dingman Center portfolio company has landed its party game, Wits & Wagers, on the shelves of Target stores nationwide for the upcoming holiday season. The Dingman Center, part of the University of Marylands Robert H. Smith School of Business, helps students and regional entrepreneurs develop their businesses. North Star Games was started and incubated at the center when founders Dominic Crapuchettes and Satish Pillalamarri were 2004 Smith MBA candidates.

  

Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP selected second-year MBA student Tom Hessen's Web site SlyReply.com as Web Site of the Week in September 2007. Hessen's site is a group messaging site that he created during his first year of the Smith MBA program. He was able to create most of it during winter and spring breaks and is continuing to develop the site now during his second year, creating additional functionality.

Eleven Smith students joined over 7,000 attendees at the 18th Annual National Society of Hispanic MBAs (HSHMBA) Conference and Career Expo in Houston, Oct. 4-6, 2007. Students networked with representatives from over 300 organizations, received career search advice and explored internship and full-time job opportunities. There were so many opportunities for students and professionals, said first-year MBA student Jorge Diaz. Im glad I was able to go. I would definitely encourage others to attend.

Students and alumni gathered together at the Smith School on Saturday, Oct. 6, for the 5th Annual MBA Alumni Mentor Program Kickoff. The MBA Alumni Mentor program is a key component of Smiths commitment to bringing real-world career experiences to current MBA students. Its stated purpose is to teach MBA students the value of lifelong networking and to serve as a catalyst for future business partnerships. The program provides the opportunity for students to expand career contacts and cultivate relationships with the over 500 active participants.

A team from the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business was named a finalist for the 2007 Thunderbird School of Management Sustainable Innovation Summit. The team will travel to Thunderbirds Campus in Glendale, AZ this coming weekend, November 8 -10, 2007, to compete in the finals against nine other teams. The finalists come from masters programs from across the country. The schools that Maryland will be competing with are the University of California Davis, Purdue University, Johns Hopkins, Duke University, the University of Rochester, and SUNY Buffalo.

Horatio Alger's "American Dream" has finally met his match. Her name is the "European Dream," and she's here to stay. At least, that's what Jeremy Rifkin thinks. Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and world-renowned economist, spoke to approximately 120 full-time MBA students on October 12, offering a glimpse of the globalized world he says MBAs will enter after graduation.

Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP selected second-year MBA student Tom Hessen's Web site SlyReply.com as Web Site of the Week in September 2007. Hessen's site is a group messaging site that he created during his first year of the Smith MBA program. He was able to create most of it during winter and spring breaks and is continuing to develop the site now during his second year, creating additional functionality.

Sonny Vaccaro, a sports marketing legend best known for brokering major endorsement deals with basketball stars the likes of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, speaks to Smith School undergraduates on Sept. 26.