Will A $25M Gift Help Vault This Texas B-School Into The MBA Top Tier?

From College Station, Texas: The Mays Business School at Texas A&M University received its largest single donation in history April 26: $25 million.

The funds are from the school’s namesake Lowry Mays’ family foundation. The foundation and Lowry Mays have been instrumental in making the business school what it is today and will be in the future.

The donation will help fund the construction of a new building for the b-school, which will house expanded graduate programs, support increasing enrollment, and enhance current programs, the school says.

Highlighted most in an announcement ceremony April 26: the ability of the donation to propel the school to the top of national lists.

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Belk College of Business names new dean: Real estate prof Richard Buttimer

From Charlotte, North Carolina: Richard J. Buttimer Jr. is dean of the Belk College of Business, effective July 1, following approval by the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees.

Buttimer comes to Charlotte from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where he has been dean of the Coggin College of Business for four years. Under his leadership, the college has extended interdisciplinary research and collaborative partnerships and has established and expanded industry-responsive centers, labs and fields of study. Prior to his appointment in Florida, he was a long-serving faculty member in Charlotte’s Belk College.

Before joining UNF in 2020, Buttimer was the John Crosland Sr. Distinguished Professor of Real Estate and Development at Charlotte and served the Belk College as senior associate dean, associate dean for faculty and research, director of the Childress Klein Center for Real Estate and in other leadership roles. Earlier in his career, he was the Gould/Mayfield Scholar in Real Estate and director of the real estate master’s degree program at the University of Texas at Arlington.

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Georgetown MBA Class of 1998 establishes scholarship & fellowship in celebration of 25 years

From Washington, D.C.: To commemorate 25 years since their graduation, the Georgetown MBA Class of 1998 has pledged $218,000 to establish the MBA Class of 1998 Endowed MBA Scholarship Fund and Current Use MBA Entrepreneurship Fellowship Fund to support the advancement of Full-time MBA students in the McDonough School of Business. The gift was inspired by the Class of 1998 reunion celebration and intends to enhance the MBA experience for future generations.

“This gift demonstrates what is possible when a class of graduates leverages their lifelong relationships and connections to create new opportunities for the students who come after them,” said Sudipta Dasmohapatra, senior associate dean of MBA programs. “We are grateful to the MBA Class of 1998 for their generous commitment to our school and for providing another mechanism to attract the best talent to the Georgetown MBA program.”

The scholarship and fellowship funds reflect the unique makeup of the Class of 1998 and their shared experiences in the Georgetown MBA program. With a focus on student engagement, the merit-based Class of 1998 Endowed MBA Scholarship Fund will support one Full-time MBA student every year in their academic pursuits.

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What does it mean to be a scholar in an age of AI?

From Cambridge, UK: The academic profession, including in business schools, is like an exclusive members club. Faculty members seek tenure, promotions and greater prestige among peers based on a well-understood set of elite rules. A scholar whose article is published in the most prestigious journal, with the highest standards for acceptance and rejection, will achieve rewards in a way publication in a less-lauded journal may not.

But this long-established code of the academic professor is based on a pivotal understanding: scarcity.

So what happens when generative artificial intelligence (AI) upends this understanding by allowing the creation of far more than a limited number of exceptional articles, perhaps even a virtually limitless supply of them?

That’s the focus of an editorial, “From scarcity to abundance,” in the Academy of Management Journal co-authored by Professor Matthew Grimes at Cambridge Judge Business School.

“Our purpose in writing this editorial is to prompt some deep thinking and soul searching amongst ourselves and our peers about what we want our profession to look like given the rapid advances in AI,” Grimes says.

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