Business School

DURHAM, N.C. -- In the largest cheating scandal in the history of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, 34 MBA students face serious penalties after university officials determined they collaborated on answers for an exam. Nine students face expulsion, said Mike Hemmerich, an associate dean at the business school. Fifteen will receive a one-year suspension from the school along with a failing grade in the course. Nine will get a failing grade in the course, and one student received a failing grade for the exam.

The University of Maryland, College Park had the most successful fund-raising day in its history yesterday, announcing two gifts totaling $21 million to benefit a new performing arts center and expand its business school.Clarice Smith's $15 million donation matches the two largest donations in the history of the school, including one from her husband, Robert H. Smith, given last year. The family's total of more than $30 million makes them the biggest donors to any public university in Maryland.

Jessica Pearsall has a mental picture of her first day in school -- from finding an early morning parking space for her Ford mini-van to slipping behind a desk in the back of the classroom.She's mapped out her route to campus, planned what she will wear, her school supplies were purchased three weeks in advance. If students were graded on preparation, Jessica would have her first A.On Tuesday at 9: 25 a.m. this 37-year-old mother of four becomes a Loyola College freshman. More than another fall semester's start, an adventure will be launched -- a journey not just for one part-time undergraduate from Ellicott City but for an entire family dedicated to helping her every step of the way."

The University of Maryland, College Park's drive for national respect got a boost yesterday from the annual rankings of graduate schools issued by U.S. News and World Report.Though the meteoric rise of UMCP's engineering school ended, doctoral programs in many of its science departments remained strong:UMCP's computer science department was 11th in the country, physics was 14th, and mathematics 21st. Those departments outranked their counterparts at the Johns Hopkins University.Hopkins' biological sciences ranked sixth in the country and geology was ninth, while UMCP did not make the top 25 in those two disciplines.

When Howard Frank became dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business in 1997, his mandate was clear: Make the University of Maryland, College Park's program a model of what a business school should be like in the next century.The key, he said, would be to prepare students for a business world that was changing at lightning speed. So, in a transformation being mirrored by business schools nationwide, the university's program added courses in electronic commerce, global knowledge management and other technological areas.

Raymond A. "Chip" Mason, chairman and chief executive officer of Legg Mason Inc., will be named "business leader of the year" next week by Loyola College's Sellinger School of Business and Management.Mason, who has built the Baltimore brokerage and asset management company to an institution that oversees $95 billion and employs about 4,500 people, said he has refused to accept such awards in the past."I did it because of Sellinger," said Mason, referring to the late Rev. Joseph A. Sellinger, who was president of the college and built the business school.

On one end of the telephone line was William Kirwan, president of the University of Maryland, College Park. He was talking with Robert Smith, the man responsible for building his own city, Crystal City, Va.Smith, fabulously wealthy and exceptionally generous, just might be willing to give a huge chunk of change to the university, he told Kirwan. A huge chunk.Kirwan quickly consulted Howard Frank, the dean of the school of business, and told him a donor might be willing to drop millions of dollars on the school.

Loyola College is hoping another move across Charles Street will help it make a name for itself nationwide.Plans for a student recreation center on the site of Boumi Temple are among the changes that have turned what not long ago was a local commuter college into a regional university.Loyola officials plan to start playing on the national stage."We want to be considered one of the best Catholic colleges in the country," said the Rev. Harold E. "Hap" Ridley Jr., S.J., the school president.

He helped build an early version of the Internet. Now, as the new dean of business at the University of Maryland, Howard Frank is banking on information technology to vault his institution into the upper echelon of the nation's business schools."

The creation of a professorship is usually not a subject of great intellectual debate.But when the trendy University of California at Berkeley this year announced the endowment of a new chair, many academics paused to ponder what post-industrial society was coming to.With a $1 million grant from Xerox Corp. and its Japanese affiliate, Berkeley created a Distinguished Professor of Know-ledge -- at its business school.Never mind that some professors, particularly professors of philosophy, could not understand what a professor of know-ledge knows or teaches.

When Yash Gupta was dean of the business school at the University of Southern California, "I would get five phone calls a day from different businesses," he says. Entrepreneurs were looking for advice or resources. Start-ups sought interns. Investors wanted ideas. Business leaders wanted to teach. Then he moved to Baltimore. "Not as much" evidence of passionate innovation or business-academic symbiosis here, he says. "We could do better." Gupta, the dean of the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, is probably being diplomatic.

Time Warner to spin off AOL, ending ill-fated deal WASHINGTON -: Media giant Time Warner announced Thursday what it had said it intended to do more than a year ago: Unload its struggling AOL advertising-and-dial-up unit, which will face life as a standalone, publicly traded company. The move officially ends the nine-year saga of Dulles, Va.-based AOL and New York's Time Warner, which began when AOL co-founder Steve Case engineered what was hailed at the time as the first of what would be several mega-marriages between old and new media.

In the spirit of his great-great-great-grandfather, real estate financier William P. Carey wants to make his mark in Baltimore, and he's got millions to provide as an economic stimulus. It's an incredibly generous offer for a 77-year-old native who made his fortune elsewhere but cites his 18th-century ancestor, city merchant James Carey, as the inspiration for his bequest. His is a deep, emotional tie to a city with obvious needs and potential. Mr. Carey, of New York, has already invested in the city's future business leaders and entrepreneurs with a $50 million gift to establish a graduate business school at the Johns Hopkins University.

A House of Delegates panel decided yesterday to strip $3 million in planning money for Morgan State University's business school from next year's budget and to restrict another $3 million in building projects until the school overhauls its procurement processes, which are under criminal investigation by the state attorney general's office. Yesterday's action by the House Appropriations Committee's education subcommittee was the strongest response yet by the legislature to an audit report that found millions in questionable contracts at the Northeast Baltimore school.

A House of Delegates panel decided yesterday to strip $3 million in planning money for Morgan State University's business school from next year's budget and to restrict another $3 million in building projects until the school overhauls its procurement processes, which are under criminal investigation by the state attorney general's office. Yesterday's action by the House Appropriations Committee's education subcommittee was the strongest response yet by the legislature to an audit report that found millions in questionable contracts at the Northeast Baltimore school.

Sister Mary Anne Brown, who had been principal of a Patterson Park business school during a lengthy teaching career, died of cardiovascular disease Monday at her order's Aston, Pa. retirement home. She was 87. Born Mary Anne Brown in Wilmington, Del., she entered the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia in 1939 and received the name Sister Mary Liguori. She later used her baptismal name. Sister Mary Anne earned a bachelor's degree in English from Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg and had a master's degree from Catholic University of America.

We have entered a week that features equal portions of gratitude and uncomfortable dinner conversations. For many, Thanksgiving is a mixed bag; we count our blessings and defend our beliefs. Good manners dictate no talk of politics or religion - but these days, there's little else. As we say grace, some of us will add a silent prayer, "Please God, do not let Uncle Bart start in on Reagan as our greatest president." But if we can pay attention through dessert, we'll notice something that should trouble us even more.

The Johns Hopkins University board of trustees voted yesterday to approve the appointment of Yash P. Gupta, a veteran leader of three business schools, as inaugural dean of the Carey Business School, which opened in January, officials said. Gupta's goal: to transform a regional, part-time division serving working adults into a "phenomenal, world-class program" that eventually will rank among the nation's brand-name business schools, he said. "He has the imagination, the energy and the skill to build the Carey Business School into one of the nation's most innovative and respected," said Hopkins President William R. Brody in a statement.

Under Armour founder Kevin A. Plank and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carleton S. Fiorina, both alumni of the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, have donated $175,000 to establish a fund that will invest in student- and alumni-run companies, the school announced yesterday. The fund at the business school's Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship adds to a growing list of resources for budding entrepreneurs at the university, business school officials said.

It's the size of a small office - in fact, it used to be one - but the University of Maryland's business school hopes its new television studio will have an impact far beyond its walls. The Robert H. Smith School of Business sees the fiber-optic-equipped room, set up so faculty can do "live talkbacks" for broadcast and cable news programs, as one part of its continual effort to distinguish itself in a crowded market. Like its Interstate 95 billboard and its lighted signs inside Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, its professors on screen can draw thousands of eyes.