School Notes: School of Management
March/April 2016

Alumna gift endows SOM deanship

A landmark gift from Indra K. Nooyi ’80MPPM, chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, Inc., endows the SOM deanship and inaugurates the school’s new Fifth Decade Innovation Fund. With this gift, Nooyi becomes the most generous SOM graduate in terms of lifetime giving to the school; she is also the first woman to endow the deanship at a top business school.

Edward A. Snyder is the inaugural Indra K. Nooyi Dean. He has led SOM since 2011 and was recently appointed to a second five-year term.

The Fifth Decade Innovation Fund is so named because SOM is entering its fifth decade. It is an ambitious initiative designed to advance the school’s goal of developing global leaders who will bring a multidisciplinary approach to business.

Five schools collaborate on new course

A new Global Network Course addresses the global challenges of urbanization. In Urban Resilience: Complexity, Collaborative Structures, and Leadership Challenges, a small network online course led by the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, students work in virtual teams to explore issues affecting cities, including aging infrastructure, growth strategies, and climate change.

The course is the first to use resources from multiple network schools. Professors from five schools across three continents—Sauder, EGADE Business School, University of Ghana Business School, Indian Institute of Management–Bangalore, and the Yale School of Management—collaborate to provide a variety of perspectives. Additional views come from practitioners in business, government, and civil society. Representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation and its 100 Resilient Cities project will also take part.

Developing global skills

Yale SOM launched Global Virtual Teams in January, a new core curriculum course that introduces students to research on what makes global business teams successful and helps them develop the skills to work on projects as part of international teams. Students will use the skills developed in the course as they work with colleagues from two schools in the Global Network for Advanced Management on a virtual team project in the Operations Engine course. The course is required for all MBA students starting with the first-year Class of 2017.