Dean Kim B. Clark Photo by Tom Kates

As we begin the new academic year, I welcome the opportunity to share the exciting initiatives and activities under way at Harvard Business School. All our efforts are designed to pursue with excellence the School’s mission: to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Through skilled and passionate teaching, the building of intellectual capital, and the broad communication of ideas, we are advancing knowledge of how organizations and institutions can perform more effectively and, ultimately, benefit people in every sphere of life throughout the world. I’d like to highlight a few key areas of work that reflect our commitment to improving the way we carry out our mission.

MBA Admissions
We continue to seek outstanding students from a wide range of backgrounds whose experience will enrich our classrooms. We therefore dedicate extraordinary effort to finding and selecting MBA applicants with the greatest potential for leadership. This past year, for example, we interviewed eighteen hundred candidates, including every admitted student. On all dimensions — including academic, leadership and work experience, and involvement in their communities — the quality of our students is remarkable. We then work equally hard to make sure the students we want can come to Soldiers Field. The prospect of graduating with high levels of debt can narrow our applicant pool and restrict the career paths of our graduates, so we are working to improve our ability to offer financial aid. This year our yield (the rate of acceptance on offers of admissions) surpassed an astounding 90 percent — the highest of any business or professional school.

Global Outreach
On the global front, we officially launched the Japan Research Office in December 2002 and the European Research Center in March 2003, adding these areas to the growing list of research centers in key regions — including Latin America, Silicon Valley, and the Asia-Pacific — where we are building relationships that support and facilitate faculty research and course development. From the time the Global Initiative was begun in 1996, these research centers have enabled HBS to strengthen ties with local alumni, businesses, and universities; the result is a far deeper understanding of each area’s managerial issues and strategies and a far richer curriculum in all our educational programs.

This summer we brought to campus more than seventy faculty, deans, and rectors from business schools in Spain, Eastern Europe, Nigeria, South Africa, China, and Latin America for the Colloquium on Participant-Centered Learning, an intensive program designed to introduce case-method teaching and case writing. As economies and nations become even more closely linked, I believe the long-term benefits of these efforts will be significant.

Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Values
Our Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Values (CGLV) (see www.cglv.hbs.edu) workshops and plenary sessions engaged experts from business, government, and academia on issues including executive compensation, limits to board effectiveness, capital market intermediaries, and the role of management education. These highly informative sessions stimulated new thinking and will form a basis for ongoing research during the coming year.

In the MBA Program, this winter we will launch a new required course to help students understand the legal, ethical, economic, and social responsibilities of organizations and their employees, including the role of personal values in individual decision-making. This course, over two years in development, reflects our commitment as a faculty and as an institution to ensure that every facet of the HBS experience prepares our students for leadership.

Technology and Learning
We continue to make significant advances in the use of technology, a high priority for the School. This summer we launched the next-generation Course Platform, a significant enhancement to our already innovative Web-based tool that allows faculty and students to post and share class schedules, assignments, video, and handouts. Additionally, our faculty experimented with new ways to bring the world into the classroom and our classroom to the world. Professor David Garvin, for example, developed a multimedia case — in real-time — that followed the newly appointed CEO of a local medical center as he attempted to turn around the organization.

Professor Michael Porter “virtually” cotaught an elective course with more than fifteen partner schools and faculty from around the world, including Spain, Costa Rica, Thailand, and Rwanda. Using a combination of online resources such as discussion groups, video, and a customized “iSite” featuring readings and assignments, hundreds of students were able to take the course at their local institution. Both efforts are extremely exciting and highlight the potential power of adapting new (and existing) technologies in novel ways.

The Future
In every sphere, we are committed to ensuring the excellence, relevance, and leadership of Harvard Business School. As you know, we have undertaken a comprehensive fundraising campaign, the School’s first, and the support of the community for our goals has been tremendous. At campaign events and other gatherings throughout the year, it has been especially gratifying to meet so many alumni and friends of the School who share our conviction that HBS — our students, our faculty, our alumni, and our classroom — is unique.

This year we acknowledged several remarkable gifts. The gift of Arthur Rock (MBA ’51) to establish The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship will dramatically expand our work in a field important to all our graduates. The visionary gift of Frank Batten (MBA ’52) for the long-term needs of the campus will help ensure the vitality of the School for generations to come.

It is the support of all our alumni that makes the difference at HBS, and I am grateful for your wonderful generosity to the School. It is your gifts large and small, your participation and advice, and your help to our faculty and students that keep HBS vital and strong. You have my deepest thanks.

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