|
Randall J. Weisenburger of Omnicom Gives Wharton School
Communication Program $1.1 Million
May 2, 2005 — The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announced today a gift from Randall J. Weisenburger, Omnicom Group’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, of $750,000 to the Wharton Communication Program. This follows an initial gift of $350,000 in 2001, resulting in one of the largest cumulative gifts — $1.1 million — ever made to a business school’s communication program.
“This is a very significant gift to Wharton’s Communication Program,” said Wharton Dean Patrick Harker. “It will help us to strengthen that program, which prepares business leaders who are able not only to formulate vision and strategy, but also to effectively handle crisis communication issues.”
“I share Wharton’s commitment to innovation and global leadership, and am proud to help expand the world’s premier MBA communication program,” said Weisenburger, who is a 1987 Wharton MBA graduate and member of the School’s Board of Overseers.
The Wharton Communication Program, founded in 1975, offers a required communication course in its MBA core curriculum. Recently the Program’s scope has expanded with the development of innovative elective courses on topics such as communicating to investors, advanced persuasion, writing to business audiences and crisis communication.
“Wharton recognizes that strong communication skills are essential for business leaders,” said Lisa Warshaw, director of the Communication Program. “Mr. Weisenburger’s generous gifts will help us to anticipate communication challenges our graduates will face, and better prepare our students for leadership roles.”
Weisenburger’s prior gift created the Wharton-Omnicom Communication Fellows Program, which supports second-year MBA students and other Penn graduate students to serve as writing and oral communications coaches for Management Communication. This required, core course is taken by approximately 800 full-time MBA and nearly 200 MBA for Executives students. Class size is nine students per section. A Wharton-Omnicom Communication Fellow participates in each of the more than 100 sections taught to the full-time MBA students. Fellows participate in the classroom and lead required one-on-one meetings with every student in which they review and critique taped student speeches.
This supplemental gift will allow the Communication Program to expand the involvement of the Fellows in the classroom. With this gift, the program hopes to increase the number of Fellows from the current number of 68 to 80 in the spring of 2006.
Some of the initiatives the new gift will support include:
- Expansion of initiatives in which Fellows work with students to improve their writing;
- The development of new electives and enhancement of current elective courses on communication;
- Increased assistance to students hoping to be entrepreneurs — such as providing coaching on presentations to the investment community
Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE:OMC) is a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom’s branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is recognized around the world for its academic strengths across every major discipline and at every level of business education. Founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school in the nation, Wharton has approximately 4,600 undergraduate, MBA, Executive MBA, and doctoral students, more than 8,000 participants in its executive education programs annually, and an alumni network of more than 80,000 worldwide.
# # #
| 
