School Notes: School of Management
January/February 2007

SOM leads in enrollment of women MBA students

With women making up 38 percent of the Class of 2008, the School of Management has the highest percentage of women MBA students enrolled for 2006 among leading business schools, according to a census released in October by the Forte Foundation. SOM dean Joel Podolny called it a "wonderful affirmation" of the school's efforts to recruit women, and added, "This is a banner time for the women leaders of SOM, both past and present" -- referring also to Fortune magazine's recent naming of Indra Nooyi ’80MBA as the most powerful woman in business. The Forte Foundation is a consortium of top U.S. and European business schools, major corporations, and nonprofits, that is dedicated to encouraging women to pursue leadership roles in business. It conducted the census of female enrollment among its 27 member schools, which include Harvard Business School, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, MIT, and Tuck.

Students take off in new curriculum

As first-year students embarked on the Organizational Perspectives courses, a series of eight all-new classes that forms the heart of the new Yale SOM MBA curriculum, they were also preparing for another embarkation. In January 2007 first-year students are traveling to one of eight destinations around the world. Yale SOM is the first major business school to require such an international trip. Faculty leaders designed the trips to examine key issues in international business, and students will meet with businesspeople, government officials, and nonprofit leaders. Each trip will also link to one or more of the Organizational Perspective courses through pre-trip preparation and through reports and activities conducted in the classes after students return. The trips will go to India, China, Singapore, South Africa, Costa Rica, and Poland, among other destinations. See mba.yale.edu/internationalexperience for a complete list of trips.

Center renamed in honor of Ira Millstein

The school has renamed its new corporate governance center the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management, in honor of corporate governance expert Ira M. Millstein. Millstein, a senior partner at the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, is also senior associate dean for corporate governance at Yale SOM.

Considered one of the world's leading experts on corporate governance, Millstein was integral in the launch of the center, serving as its director through the inaugural Yale Governance Forum in June 2006, and he continues to oversee the center in his role as senior associate dean.

The center was established with the receipt of $20 million in gifts and commitments from individual and corporate donors. The mission of the center is to explore the role of corporate governance to better enable corporations both to be competitive in their markets and to contribute to society. "Ira Millstein's reputation in the field of corporate governance is unmatched," said Dean Joel Podolny. "He has brought tremendous innovation and real-world insight to the center and it has flourished under his leadership." Read more about the center online at millstein.som.yale.edu.