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The fellowship has supported the aspirations of
five members of the Class of 2004. "I felt so lucky
to get into Wharton and even more lucky to receive
this fellowship," said Mitzi Reaugh, WG'04.
Reaugh decided to go back to business school
after just three years of working in marketing for
several Internet startups,an experience that may
not have given her stock options to retire on but
did make her recognize the value of a business
education. "Having worked at a few startups, I
could see that even with money, there are a lot of
strategic and business decisions to be made," she
said."I knew my success in the future would probably be helped with a more formal business education." While she is planning to work initially in
strategy consulting,she still has an eventual goal
to start her own company. "This fellowship has
made such a difference in my experience, and I am
very grateful," she said.
Levy is impressed by the current students and
the progress of the School. "One of the things that
strikes me is that there is much more of an interest
today in the Wharton community," he said. "When
I went there,it was a more individualized program,
but the cohort system and increased attention to
alumni have built up a lot more strength about
what the Wharton community means."
Transforming Research
and Teaching: Promoting Intellectual Entrepreneurship
The campaign established five new
research centers and programs, and
these initiatives are generating new
knowledge in key business disciplines
and developing innovative approaches
to education.
The most interesting challenges in business
often arrive when companies have the fewest
resources to address them. At a time when breakthroughs such as the Internet, biosciences and
other emerging technologies were presenting
opportunities to transform business, the companies that might be most interested in these areas
were struggling with environments of turbulent
change. While retailing is crucial to the economy
and offers key insights for marketing research, it is
often underexplored. During the campaign, several key gifts positioned Wharton for leadership in
understanding key business issues and applying
new technology and approaches to learning.
Biosciences Crossroads Initiative:
Mack Center
While it is clear that biosciences will have a
major impact on business and the world, the exact
course of that impact is much less clear."The biosciences are going to have a transformative impact
on diverse industries," said George Day, Director
of the William and Phyllis Mack Center for
Technological Innovation and Geoffrey T. Boisi
Professor. "Everyone is seeing it as a tremendous
source of new opportunities, and it is also changing the business model for the pharmaceutical
industry. If you listen to business leaders, they see
that the future is in biosciences. This is where the
next wave of dramatic breakthroughs – new therapies, diagnostics and businesses – are expected to
come from. It is also an industry that is globalizing
at a very rapid rate – not one of those sciences
controlled by the U.S. and North America."
Wharton is extremely well positioned to study
biosciences. Since 1994,a team of faculty in the
Emerging Technologies Management Research
Program have been studying strategies for managing emerging technologies. Faculty members have
produced many research studies and collaborated
on a book, Wharton on Managing Emerging
Technologies. "We are the only business school
that has a schoolwide thrust focused on the management issues of emerging technologies," Day
said. The program has built a large and diverse
team of faculty members with insights on emerging technology. In addition to Wharton's own
strengths in this area,the initiative draws on the
Penn Medical School, one of the top research
universities in the country in genomics.
While Wharton was in a strong position to
explore the business issues related to biosciences
and other emerging technologies, finding funding
to pursue the research was a challenge. "We are
dealing with technology management when the
whole sector is in trouble," Day said.
Alumnus William L. Mack, W '61, generously
contributed $10 million to create the William and
Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation.
"It allowed us to do some investment spending in
new initiatives during an unprecedented downturn
in technology," said Day. "Instead of just hanging
on,we were able to push ahead and build something new." In addition to the new Biosciences
Crossroads initiative, Wharton also launched the
foremost academic conference on technology
management,attracting 80 scholars from around the world.
This type of investment is critical to building
and sustaining intellectual leadership."The real
leaders in industry and in universities are those
that continue investment spending during a down-
turn while the rest of industry is retrenching," Day
said. "This has given us the depth of resources to
keep growing."
Retailing
As a successful leader in the retailing industry,
Jay H. Baker, W'56, wanted to give something back
to both the industry and the School. Baker, current
director and former president of Kohl's Department
Stores, and his wife, Patty, gave $10 million to
establish the Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative to
promote research and education in retailing and
encourage students to enter retail careers.The gift
was in addition to a major gift to create the Patty
and Jay H.Baker Forum, the structural heart of the
new Huntsman Hall, and to provide financial aid to
undergraduates.
"It is a vibrant industry that represents a big
chunk of the economy," said Stephen Hoch, John J.
Pomerantz Professor of Marketing and director of
the new retailing intiative. "It is also very dynamic.
From the point of view of marketing,operations
management and other areas, retailing is a place
that is important in developing knowledge. It is its
own complex little microcosm that can be a focal
point and laboratory for research.It is easy to
experiment. There is a lot of data and it is easy to
observe what is going on."
The initiative, which is designed to cultivate
future leaders of the retailing industry, also provides great opportunities for education. "Everyone
is shopping," Hoch said. "It is highly observable,
so there are a lot of good pedagogical aspects to
it." By understanding retail, there may be important insights for other areas as well. "If you look at
successful retailers today, they have been able to
achieve huge productivity gains." Hoch said.
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