Neubauer Funds Entrepreneurship Chair
Joseph Neubauer, ’65, has given $1.5 million to Chicago to establish the Neubauer Family Professorship of Entrepreneurship and Finance. With entrepreneurship on the rise–surveys indicate that 1 in 12 Americans are starting a new business–Neubauer couldn’t have picked a better time to support Chicago’s efforts in entrepreneurial education and research.

“Entrepreneurs are the single biggest factor contributing to the dynamism of the economy,” Neubauer told family members, faculty, and colleagues who gathered at Gleacher Center in October to celebrate the new chair. “This entrepreneurial spirit has made the United States economy the envy of the world.”

University president Hugo Sonnenschein called Neubauer a “founding father of entrepreneurial studies at Chicago” and said that other donors have responded to Neubauer’s gift by endowing a second chair in entrepreneurial studies, funding student scholarships in entrepreneurship, and sponsoring the New Venture Challenge, a business plan competition for students.

Steven N. Kaplan now holds the Neubauer chair, which is the first named professorship at Chicago dedicated to the study of entrepreneurship. A popular professor who has been at Chicago since 1988, Kaplan has played a vital role in the school’s growing entrepreneurship program. Neubauer is a trustee of the University of Chicago, a member of the Council on the GSB, and chairman of a newly formed GSB entrepreneurship advisory board.–M.M.B.


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Gifts Support Kilts Marketing Center
James M. Kilts, ’74, president and CEO of Nabisco Inc., and the Nabisco Foundation have announced their intention to contribute $2 million to establish the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing.

“I hope the center will extend and enrich the current marketing curriculum,” said Kilts, a member of the Council on the Graduate School of Business. “I want the GSB to remain one of the leaders in both the fundamental science and the application.”

Chicago has a long history of innovative marketing research. The 1993 Dominick’s Project, in which marketing faculty worked with the retail grocery chain to conduct live merchandising experiments, resulted in new information on using scanner data in price and promotions strategy. Current research by marketing faculty includes new product introduction strategies, direct market response modeling, the performance of private labels, couponing, and models of price.–M.M.B.


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Erickson Wins Teaching Award
Assistant professor of accounting Merle Erickson received the 1999 American Taxation Association/ Arthur Andersen Teaching Inno-vation in Tax Award. Erickson was recognized for three teaching cases he developed for his Taxes and Business Strategy Course (B416).

The three corporate tax strategy cases relate to DuPont’s repurchase of $9 billion of its stock from Seagram, the WorldCom/ MCI merger, and Quaker Oats’s divestiture of Snapple. The honor comes with a $2,500 prize.–M.M.B.


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I.M.B.A. Program Adds Study Tour
International M.B.A. Program students now have two more opportunities for hands-on experience overseas, thanks to a new travel-study component added to the program.

Members of the I.M.B.A.class of ’01–59 students in all–participated in the program’s inaugural trip, a 10-day global study tour of Berlin and London. The late-summer tour included an international business seminar course, company visits, and networking events.

“In terms of really understanding a region, this was a great opportunity,” said Beth Bader, associate dean for international programs. “It was also very positive from the standpoint of career exploration, and to have an opportunity to talk with people whose companies we visited.”

The idea for the tour came from faculty and administrators, who recommended two cohorted international study tours on different continents. First-year students will participate in the first study tour between summer and fall quarters. Second-years will participate in the planning and fundraising for a second, optional trip to a second continent prior to the start of the fall quarter.

The I.M.B.A. program, now in its fifth year, provides training in business fundamentals as well as in international culture and society. It lasts one quarter longer than the traditional M.B.A. program and requires proficiency in a second language and experience working and studying abroad.–M.M.B.


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First Singapore Director Named
Chia Hock Hwa was appointed director of the International Executive M.B.A. Program in Singapore in September.

Hock Hwa, a native Singaporean, is no stranger to business education–or to Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. from Curtin University in Australia and a Ph.D. from Cranfield University in England and has taught at Curtin, INSEAD, and New York University’s Stern School of Business. In the early 1980s, he participated in the GSB’s executive development program in Singapore. Hock Hwa also has held marketing and strategy positions with Kao and Del Monte and served as president of the Eastern Consulting Group-Asia Pacific, where he developed marketing and strategy consulting services and training programs for multinational firms.–A.D.


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Robinson to Lead Diversity Affairs
Janis Robinson joined Chicago as director of the Office of Diversity Affairs in August. Her efforts
include establishing mentoring relationships between prospective and current students, organizing activities for incoming minority students, and helping connect students with resources, individuals, and groups as needed.

“I want to make sure people have a good experience here,” Robinson said. “Much of what I do is putting students together with resources and with other people. I also serve as a conduit to the administration.”

Before coming to Chicago, Robinson served as executive director for the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs (ABLE), an organization of African American business owners. Previously, she worked at Citibank in human resources and marketing. She also spent a year working on a $10 million capital campaign at Barnard College at Columbia University, after receiving her B.A. in economics and urban studies from the school. She received her M.B.A. from Purdue University’s Krannert School. Her husband, Craig, is a 1991 graduate of Chicago’s evening program.–M.M.B.


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Midway Club Opens in Downtown Chicago
Chicago alumni, including many club presidents who were in town for an annual gathering, visited the new Midway Club for an opening reception in late October. The private membership club, on the fifth floor of Gleacher Center, is available exclusively to GSB alumni and their guests. Amenities include a dining room that overlooks the Chicago River, additional private dining rooms, a lounge and bar (above), state-of-the-art video conference facilities (right), a billiard room, a media room with big-screen TV, conference rooms, a business center, and valet parking. For more information or a membership brochure, call the alumni office at (773) 702-7727.–C.N.


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Go West, Young M.B.A.
Chicago students who want to head west after graduation got a chance to connect with West Coast companies and alumni at West Quest, four days of networking and career events in the Bay Area.

More than 250 students participated in the four-day event in December. Highlights included panel discussions, alumni speakers, site visits, and a job fair held in conjunction with the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Gateway, bizbuyer.com, and Wells Fargo were among the companies participating. The event was cosponsored by Goldman Sachs, Siebel Systems, and Intel. Featured alumni speakers included Robert V. Adams, ’61, chairman of Documentum Inc.; Howard Graham, ’73, senior vice president of finance and administration at Siebel Systems; Guy Nohra, ’89, general partner of Alta Part-ners; and John Van Dyke, ’69, founder of Dakota Water Systems.

This is the largest West Coast trip ever conducted by the school. The students, who paid their own expenses for the trip, are members of the High-Tech Group, the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Group, and the West Coast Group.–M.M.B.


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