School Notes: School of Management
November/December 2007

Architect chosen to design new SOM campus

The architectural firm Foster + Partners, led by Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Norman Foster ’62MArch, will design a new campus for the School of Management, which will more than double the current SOM footprint. Construction is expected to be completed by the fall of 2011. The new complex, which will include a 230,000-square-foot building, will house state-of-the-art classrooms, faculty offices, the school's academic centers, and student and community spaces. The larger campus will enable the school to expand student enrollment and increase the size of its faculty, as well as offer greater community facilities and allow for expanded executive programs. Plans are to pursue LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system) certification for the new construction. (For a report on the SOM campus by the Yale Alumni Magazine, see Light & Verity.)

SOM students win CNBC game show

Four students from the SOM Class of 2008 teamed up to win the first CNBC Fast Money MBA Challenge last summer, defeating students from the University of Texas McCombs School of Business in the championship round, which aired live on August 22. The television show, billed as "the varsity sport of the financial mind," pitted teams from eight top business schools -- including Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, NYU, UCLA, and Chicago -- against each other in a test of the students' financial expertise. The Yale SOM team -- Bob Doherty, Koichi Kurisu, Jeff Levi, and Krishnan Vishwanathan, along with alternates Lisa Howie and Michael McLaughlin -- will share the $200,000 grand prize, which is earmarked for education expenses.

From the classroom to the real world

The 208 members of the Class of 2008 took the lessons of SOM's new integrated management curriculum into the real world last summer as they interned in for-profit, nonprofit, and public-sector organizations. Initial reports on student performance are highly positive. This year, every student who took an internship in the investment banking industry received an offer for full-time employment. Kristin Irish, deputy director of the career development office, attributes this success to SOM's better preparation of students for the cross-disciplinary challenges of modern business. Jenna Angeles ’08, who spent her summer as a consulting intern at Booz Allen Hamilton, agreed: "The skills I learned at Yale enabled me to foster productive relationships [and] to motivate teams to move an idea forward." An annual Wall Street Journal survey of recruiters rated SOM as the most improved MBA program. The online survey of more than 4,400 MBA recruiters was conducted from December 2006 to March 2007.