Berkeley / Haas MBA News
Get the latest MBA news from Berkeley / Haas.
Published: October 28, 2013
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Launches New Mobile Learning Platform for EMBA Students
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley this week launched a new iPad-based mobile learning platform for students in its Berkeley MBA for Executives Program. Following a successful pilot program with technology partner EmpoweredU, Haas yesterday announced that it is rolling out the new mobile capabilities for all students in its EMBA program.
“Our executive MBA program will be the first degree program to experience the benefits of this mobile learning experience,” Adam Berman, who heads the Haas School’s initiatives in learning technologies, said in a statement. “For senior professionals on the go, having this kind of technology means getting the most out of their MBA experience, using their time most efficiently and deepening their ties to their classmates.”
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Published: October 9, 2013
Long-Time UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Professor Nominated to Head Federal Reserve
President Barack Obama’s nomination of Janet Yellen yesterday to head the Federal Reserve Board of Governors sparked celebration at the University of California’s Haas School of Business, where she was a member of the faculty for 26 years. If confirmed, Yellen will succeed current Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, who will step down in January 2014.
Yellen taught macroeconomics at Haas from 1980 to 2006 and was named a Berkeley Fellow earlier this year for her contributions to the school. While at Haas, Yellen’s research focused on unemployment and labor markets, monetary and fiscal policies and international trade and investment policy. In addition to her decades on the Haas faculty, Yellen has served as vice chair of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors since 2010, was president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco from 2004 through 2010 and also chaired President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1997 to 1999.
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Published: September 22, 2013
UC Berkeley Haas School of Business to Offer New and Retooled Online Classes
Following its pilot last year of a range of new online courses for its MBA students, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley is expanding its online offerings while also reworking some of the initial courses based on feedback from students and professors.
One of the three pilots offered online last year was “Power and Politics,” a popular MBA course taught by Professor Cameron Anderson. This year, the course will be offered again, but with a revamped website and platform designed to be more intuitive to use. Faster download times are also expected to improve the student experience, allowing for conversation that “mimics the in-person experience as much as possible, with back-and-forth and even spontaneous interjections,” Anderson said as part of an article on the Haas website. He noted that he got to hear from many more people as part of the online version of the class, through online class discussions and chats.
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Published: September 10, 2013
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Opens New Innovation Lab
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley is home to a new 2,700-square-foot Innovation Lab where students can participate in more team-based and experiential learning, primarily as part of the school’s innovative leader curriculum. The new I-Lab, located inside Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium, was made possible thanks to a gift from alumnus Michael Gallagher, BS ‘67, MBA ‘68, former Haas Board chairman and retired CEO of Playtex Products. Haas Lecturer Clark Kellogg and Senior Lecturer Sara Beckman, who teach the school’s “Problem Finding Problem Solving” course, taught the first class in the new labratory space on
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Published: August 15, 2013
Students from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Return from Summer Work around the Globe
More than 150 Haas MBA students will return to campus this fall having traveled the globe over the summer putting their business school skills to work addressing real-world challenges. China, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Kenya and Israel are just a handful of the countries that played host to Haas students as part of the school’s summer international business offerings.
As part of the school’s global management consulting course, International Business Development (IDB), almost 100 students in the full-time MBA program traveled overseas. Full-time students spent three weeks working in-country with 25 different clients. Projects ranged from examining potential funding models for the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund to creating a strategy for an innovation lab in Nairobi to helping a Silicon Valley tech firm develop team performance and fan engagement solutions for football leagues in England and Germany.
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Published: August 8, 2013
UCLA Anderson School of Management Hosts Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders
UCLA Anderson School of Management last month hosted 50 top students from historically black and Hispanic-serving colleges and universities as part of a program designed to expose prospective future business school students to the principles of business development, entrepreneurship and management. The University of California Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders (UC SIEML) program rotates across six UC business schools, and participating students attend classes, workshops and networking events for two consecutive summers.
Beyond the benefits provided to the students, the program also helps participating business schools connect with undergraduates before they graduate and head off in other directions. . “Take a look of other graduate degree programs,” says Linda Baldwin, Anderson assistant dean of diversity and 2013 UC SIEML director. “They have a pipeline from their undergraduate departments,” she said. “With the MBA program, there’s typically a break. The students get scattered.”
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Published: August 1, 2013
UC Berkeley’s Haas School Expands Evening & Weekend MBA Core Curriculum
Beginning in fall 2014, the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley will feature a revised core curriculum in its evening and weekend MBA program, the school announced this week. The changes, which include extending the core from two semesters to three and adding three new required courses, are designed to help students better learn and absorb the coursework.
Jon Kaplan, executive director of the Haas evening and weekend MBA program, spearheaded the campaign to implement the curriculum update, and the Haas faculty approved the changes in May.
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UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Dean Reappointed to Second Term
Rich Lyons, dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley since 2008, was reappointed last month for a second term by UC Berkeley’s provost and executive vice chancellor. Following his reappointment, which became effective July 1st, Lyons shared his vision for Haas’s future, specifically with regard to technology in education and the school’s work environment and global profile.
Lyons wants Haas to be a “definer of what’s next at the confluence of technology and management education.” More than simply translating existing courses into digital format, he wants Haas to change the courses themselves and the way it thinks about pedagogy. "It’s about things like 'game-ifying' content to engage students even more fully, having courses that adapt in real time to individual students’ needs, and letting students 'test again' until they have truly mastered material,” he said in a statement.
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Tuition Climbs at UM’s Ross School of Business, Remains Flat in UC System
Last month, the Board of Regents at the University of Michigan approved a $1,100 increase per term for its full-time MBA program at the Ross School of Business. The tuition increase, which will take effect in the fall, represents a 4.4 percent rise for in-state students and a 4 percent rise for out-of-state students. Meanwhile, the Board of Regents for the University of California system earlier this week approved a proposal that rules out tuition hikes for that system’s graduate business schools, at least for this year.
As reported by Bloomberg BusinessWeek on June 21st, two members of the six-person board at the University of Michigan voted against the tuition hike. “The continued raising of tuition is not sustainable,” Regent Denise Ilitch said in a statement. “If we were as good at raising revenue streams as we are at raising tuition, our students would be far better off.”
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UC Berkeley-Haas Graduates Enjoy Strong Employment Opportunities
Early employment data shows that MBA graduates from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley are landing top jobs and top salaries, the school reports.
The firms hiring the most Haas graduates this year include McKinsey & Co., Google, JPMorgan, Kaiser and Amazon, and salaries and signing bonuses are continuing an upward climb. Other tip hiring firms include Deloitte Consulting, Samsung, Bain, Adobe, Microsoft and Zynga.
But traditional MBA sectors are not the only ones seeing strong hiring, according to Lisa Feldman, executive director of the Career Management Group. “Real estate is a strong area for us this year, and we are also seeing a strong class of entrepreneurs,” she said in an article on the Haas website. “In addition to the entrepreneurs themselves, we have a growing number of students exploring the impact they might have in smaller organizations and seeking experience with early-stage startups,” she added.
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UC Berkeley Haas Partners with MIT Sloan on Energy Efficiency Research Project
Researchers at the Haas School of Management at the University of California at Berkeley are teaming up with researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management to take a closer look at energy-efficiency policies and regulations around the globe to determine whether they are realizing their full potential, the schools announced this week.
The project, called E2e, is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the two schools designed to find the best way to go from using a large amount of energy (“E”) to a small of amount of energy (“e”). Participating experts will include engineers, economists and others, and the initiative is led by Catherine Wolfram, associate professor and co-director of the Energy Institute at Haas, Michael Greenstone, a professor of environmental economics at MIT, and Christopher Knittel, co-director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR).
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UC Berkeley’s Haas School Awards New Hansoo Lee Fellowships to Two MBA Students
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley has awarded two inaugural $5,000 prizes as part of the Hansoo Lee Fellowship for Entrepreneurs, a new fund established to honor entrepreneur and alumnus Hansoo Lee, MBA ’10, who died in March of lung cancer.
Romi Elan and Charlie Hughes, MBA students in the Class of 2014, were selected from 10 applicants for the fellowship for a photo app they designed to help friends connect around shared interests and hobbies. Called “Goalzy,” the app is intended to help small groups of friends encourage one another through pictures to pursue personal goals. Seeing pictures of their friends’ latest harvest, for example, could spur other friends to get their own hands in the dirt at the community garden. ““We wanted to help people keep true to their promises to themselves,” Elan said in a statement.
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UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Hires Two New Permanent Finance Professors
Two visiting finance professors have joined the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley as permanent faculty members, one from Kellogg and another from Chicago Booth, Haas announced last week.
Professor Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, formerly a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Assistant ProfessorAdair Morse, formerly an associate professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, have been visiting faculty members at Haas since July 2012. Both are known for their insightful research and award-winning teaching, the school notes.
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UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Welcomes Inaugural Executive MBA Class
Members of the first class of the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program will take in majestic views of San Francisco Bay tonight while enjoying dinner and hearing from a Nobel Laureate, all part of orientation for the new 19-month program, which began on Wednesday.
Haas launched the new program after reaching a mutual decision last year with Columbia Business School to end the joint Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program. Based in Berkeley, Haas’s new program will include three off-site blocks, one in Washington, DC, one in Shanghai and one in Silicon Valley. The school's Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) curriculum, introduced as part of the full-time MBA program in 2010, will serve as the basis for the new executive MBA program.
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Published: April 11, 2013
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Spotlights Student Startups
An MBA student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business made the case for why business school can be an ideal place for entrepreneurs to get startups off the ground as part of an article in Forbes this week. At the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley many students have the same idea, and in acknowledgement the school has launched a new series to spotlight student ventures.
Andre Marquis, executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, underscored how valuable time at Haas can be for budding entrepreneurs. “The best way to create entrepreneurial leaders is to give them the experience of building startups while they are here,” he said in the latest issue of BerkeleyHaas magazine.
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Published: August 8, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Stephanie Fujii of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley
Our 2014 interview with Stephanie Fujii, the director of admissions at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, is now available.
Stephanie Fujii has been director of admissions at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley since August 2010, ably filling the shoes of outgoing director Peter Johnson, who had been with Haas for more than a decade.
That she had no trouble taking on the new role comes as no surprise. Fujii is not new to admissions, nor is she new to Haas. She has been a part of the Haas admissions team for the past seven years, serving previously as senior associate director. Before that she worked in the nonprofit sector in eldercare, after receiving an MBA of her own from Haas.
“It is exciting to be part of the process and to meet people on the road and help them understand what makes our program unique,” she says. Prior to business school she was in HR consulting and while a student at Berkeley she was a Haas Student Ambassador, which involved working closely with admissions to plan student events.
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