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SMG gets closer to head of the class

The School of Management’s mission statement of ‘fusing the art, science and technology of business’ is behind the school’s recent improvement in national and international rankings, SMG Dean Louis Lataif said.’

The Financial Times recently ranked Boston University’s graduate business school 29th in its 2009 annual ranking of the 100 top graduate business schools in the United States, a 20-spot jump from 2008, according to a press release.’

‘We’re trying to make a bigger impact on society,’ Lataif said. ‘We’re trying very hard to not be compromised in the quantitative aspects of business, but adding to that, we’re teaching people about the art of business, teaching people of the things that can’t be measured but really matter.”

Lataif said finance and economics professor Israel Shaked’s teaching method exemplifies this idea of education that is not quantifiable After each one of Shaked’s classes, he stops and asks his students to point out what could be wrong with what he had just taught them, Lataif said.’

The faculty’s teaching originality helped SMG’s MBA program achieve the third greatest improvement of all the other schools on the list. SMG’s Alumni Salary Rank improved by more than 7 percent and its value for money rank increased 13 percent, according to the press release. SMG’s global ranking jumped 27 spots to 57, as well.’

SMG ranked 49th nationally and 84th globally in 2008.’

TJ Durkin, a second-year MBA student, said the faculty is what drew him from the Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business to SMG’s MBA program.’

‘They’ve been in the business world,’ Durkin said. ‘They know what it’s like.”

Associate organizational behavior professor John McCarthy said the faculty takes a lot of pride in SMG’s mission statement, and the improved ranking is well-deserved.’

‘We think this is reflective of the good work over the years,’ he said. ‘It’s a nice recognition to see that people’s hard work has been acknowledged by people outside the community.’

‘We believe our faculty is doing a good job,’ McCarthy said. ‘We’ve had our eye on the ball for a number of years. We’ve felt we’ve been in the league.’

Lataif said although he is encouraged by ranking, he thinks the school’s reputation takes time to build, and the current ranking reflects the work of several years.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘Rankings are important in that people pay attention to them, but in my opinion, they lag reality by a decade or two,’ he said. ‘I think the quantum leap we made in Financial Times is just the beginning.’

Staff writers Laura Horton, Chonel LaPorte and Ben Timmins contributed to the reporting of this story.’

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One Comment

  1. Hey Alex,<br/>I don’t know whether it was your kindergarten teacher or BU, but someone didn’t teach you to use the word “who” instead of “that” when referring back to a person or people in the same sentence (“facilitators WHO”, “professors WHO”. That’s not the only grammatical error in your message, either.