New Global Initiative Director Takes Broad Outlook
Hawes Hall Groundbreaking
Lumry Chair Supports IT and Entrepreneurship
HBS to Host Venture Capital Forum for Women
MBA Cohorts Will Merge Next Year
Three Promoted to Full Professor
John C. Sawhill Remembered
Faculty Retirements

A generous gift from Rufus W. Lumry III (MBA '74) will establish a new chair at HBS and support teaching and learning in the field of information technology as it relates to the Internet and entrepreneurial studies at Harvard University. The joint gift to HBS and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) will fund both the Lumry Family Professorship at HBS and the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center in FAS's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Lumry's gift reflects his professional interests and expertise in technology and business, his longtime service to Harvard, and his desire to "share the blessings that my family has been given." A 1969 graduate of Harvard College, Lumry is president of Acorn Ventures, Inc., in Bellevue, Washington, a firm that provides seed capital, financial engineering, strategic planning, and fundraising support for early-stage companies that have the potential to transform or create new industries. Prior to forming Acorn Ventures, Lumry was EVP and CFO of McCaw Cellular Communications. As one of the founders of McCaw Cellular in 1982, he helped Craig McCaw create the nation's largest cellular mobile phone company, which was sold to AT&T in 1994.

The Lumry Family Professorship will support an outstanding academic leader whose research and teaching are in the field of information technology (IT), particularly the Internet and its application to business. The new chair will become an integral part of the School's IT initiative, which will keep HBS at the forefront in the use of technology to teach management skills and will help support cutting-edge research and course development. The gift will also help facilitate collaboration between the FAS and the Business School.

At HBS, the Lumry Chair incumbent will play an important role in the education of the next generation of business leaders, as students prepare to assume key positions at a time when interest in entrepreneurship and the Internet has reached unprecedented heights at the School.

"I made this gift to honor my father, whose long tradition of philanthropy has always been an inspiration," commented Lumry, a devout Christian who said he is eager to "share our blessings from the Lord with Harvard." The family's ties to Harvard extend back to an ancestor, Calvin Ellis, who graduated in 1846 from Harvard College and later became dean of Harvard Medical School.

Lumry's father, Rufus W. Lumry II, noted, "The original impulse for this gift extends back more than a hundred years and is part of a tradition that I hope will continue to thrive for many years. Going to Harvard encouraged me and other members of my family to think differently about the future. It gave us possibilities, and in making this gift, my son is inspiring that spirit of possibility in others."

Commenting on the gift, Dean Kim B. Clark said, "Rufus Lumry's career personifies the mission of the Harvard Business School to provide students with a transforming educational experience that enables them to make a difference in their companies and in the world. In his professional life, Lumry has achieved that by supplying new and emerging enterprises with the vision, inspiration, and financial support they need to chart new waters. With this extraordinary gift he will now help HBS follow that course, as the Internet and other spectacular advances in information technology bring about a host of challenges and opportunities." The Lumry Family Professorship, Clark added, will contribute greatly to the School's efforts to provide students "with the world's best resources for studying the Internet and other technologies that are changing the ways people do business around the globe."

HBS to Host Venture Capital Forum for Women

On November 3, HBS will host the first venture capital forum ever held for women entrepreneurs in the New England area. Titled "Springboard 2000: New England" and sponsored by the Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) and the National Women's Business Council, the conference is designed to increase the investment channels for women entrepreneurs and to facilitate the flow of deals.

"In the last few years we have seen a tremendous increase in the numbers of women launching fast-growth ventures in both the high-tech and the life-sciences industries," notes Andrea Silbert (MBA '92), CEO and founder of the Boston-based CWE. "However, women-led businesses are still not gaining a significant percentage of venture capital dollars. Springboard 2000 seeks to bring together these top women-led firms with the investment community to propel their growth."

During the conference, 25 to 30 invited representatives of businesses led or managed by women will make presentations to over three hundred corporate, angel, and venture investors and strategic partners. Companies seeking financing will be screened to ensure that they meet stringent standards of quality, in terms of concept, management, and growth strategy.

The HBS conference is the third in a national series of forums. The first two were held in Virginia and in Silicon Valley. At the latter gathering, 26 women made presentations that raised over $165 million in capital. Dean Kim B. Clark will participate in an awards dinner the night before the conference, honoring New England venture capital firms that have made significant investments in women-led firms. HBS professor Myra Hart and Angela Crispi, assistant dean and chief planning officer at HBS, are both members of the conference's steering committee, with Hart serving as chair.

Further information on the event can be found at www.Springboard2000.org.

MBA Cohorts Will Merge Next Year

After a scheduled review of the five-year-old practice of admitting both September and January cohorts of each MBA class, the School has decided to admit all new MBA candidates in a single September entry date, beginning with students entering the Class of 2003. In announcing the change, senior associate dean and MBA Program chair W. Carl Kester noted that while the two-cohort system had met its educational objectives and contributed numerous innovations, a special faculty and administrative staff steering committee found that the disadvantages and costs of the approach outweighed its likely future benefits.

"Students' evaluations of their educational experience in the January cohort and their prospects in the job market have been consistently on par with those of students in the September cohort," Kester said. "The system achieved the goals we set of providing students with an outstanding educational experience, stimulating innovation and change in the MBA Program, and providing valuable experience and learning about program delivery."

While the decision to discontinue the cohort system was based on a number of factors, the preference of the applicant pool was one of the most persuasive. "Applicants to the MBA Program have continued to have an overwhelming preference for September admission," Kester explained. In addition, he noted that the review identified significant disadvantages associated with the system. Among these were the compression of the class calendar to accommodate two required curriculum offerings per year and the exceptional demands the system put on faculty and MBA Program staff.

Kester emphasized that despite the decision, the January cohort had brought many lasting benefits to the MBA Program. "Innovation in the required curriculum has flourished since the initiation of the system," he stated. "There have been scores of changes, experiments, and refinements that have made the first year of the MBA Program better and stronger, and we remain dedicated to delivering an extraordinary educational experience for students in both cohorts in the Classes of 2001 and 2002."

     Three Promoted to Full Professor

	Paul A. Gompers Paul Gompers specializes in research on financial issues related to start-up, high-growth, and newly public companies. He holds a joint appointment in the Finance and the Entrepreneurial and Service Management units. Gompers has taught both the required Finance course and the Entrepreneurial Finance elective in the MBA curriculum. In the Executive Education Program, he has developed materials for and served as codirector of courses in Conflict and Evolution in Private Equity, Corporate Venture Capital, and International Private Equity. A 1987 summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, where he majored in biology, Gompers worked for a year as a research biochemist for Bayer Chemical AG before earning a master's degree in economics at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship. He completed his Ph.D. in business economics at Harvard in 1993 and spent two years on the business school faculty at the University of Chicago, where he created a new course titled Entrepreneurial Finance and Management. Gompers joined the HBS faculty in 1995. His research focuses on the structure, governance, and performance of private equity funds; sources of financing, incentive design, and performance of private firms; and long-run performance evaluation for newly public companies. He has written numerous journal articles and is the coauthor of The Venture Capital Cycle, published in 1999 by The MIT Press.
	Forest L. Reinhardt An expert on environmental management, Forest Reinhardt is currently studying the relationships between business behavior and environmental quality, particularly in the energy industry and the food and agribusiness sector. His research focuses on the relationship between environmental regulation and corporate strategy, the behavior of private and public organizations that manage natural resources, and the economics of environmental protection. Reinhardt is the author of Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles to Environmental Management, published by HBS Press this year. He has developed numerous cases on the environment, natural resources, and economic development for use in the MBA and Executive Education Programs. Other recent publications include a coauthored Harvard Business Review article on "What Every Executive Needs to Know About Global Warming" and a California Management Review piece titled "Environmental Product Differentiation: Implications for Corporate Strategy." Reinhardt, who joined the faculty in 1991, currently teaches the required MBA course Business, Government, and the International Economy as well as the elective Business and the Environment. He is a graduate of Harvard College (1979). He received an MBA (1987) from HBS, where he was a Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. (1990) in business economics, also from Harvard.
	Debora L. Spar Debora Spar is an authority on business-government relations and the political environment of commerce. Her current research focuses on issues of foreign trade and investment, examining how firms compete in foreign markets and how government policies shape and constrain their options. She is also writing a book about information-based industries, such as media and entertainment, and their quest for global advantage. Other projects include examining the political drivers of foreign direct investment and the impact of investment on human rights and labor standards. Spar is the author of The Cooperative Edge: The Internal Politics of International Cartels and coauthor of Beyond Globalism: Remaking American Foreign Economic Policy and of Iron Triangles and Revolving Doors: Cases in U.S. Foreign Policymaking. At HBS, Spar teaches Managing International Trade and Investment, a course that she created in 1996 and for which she was honored this year by the MBA Class of 2000 for excellence in teaching. A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service (1984), Spar earned an MA (1986) and a Ph.D. (1990) in government, both from Harvard. She taught at the University of Toronto and in Harvard's government department prior to joining the HBS faculty in 1991.