Instead of having his speech outline scribbled on a 3x5 card, Adam Rushforth will run his fingers over a Braille outline as he addresses students at Friday’s Marriott School convocation. Rushforth, who graduates with a business finance bachelor’s degree, has coloboma, an iris defect, which began deteriorating his vision when he was young.

Two-thousand and four is turning out to be a very good year for first-year MBA students at BYU. After weathering several rough years, internship placement has risen sharply this spring and summer. As of the first of July, 92 percent of students seeking internships were placed, compared to 61 percent placed in 2003.

As corporate scandals like Enron and WorldCom continue to shake out in the courtroom, many investors are still waiting for an acceptable explanation of how it all happened and how similar abuses can be avoided. Noted Brigham Young University fraud expert W. Steve Albrecht has identified nine abuses that converged to create what he calls the "perfect fraud storm," in which CEOs and other high-ranking corporate officers perpetrated the largest financial frauds in history.

Three teams with Brigham Young University students finished first, second and third at the University of Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge. Tropi-Cool, SilentWhistle.com and The Mayan Tree beat out seven other finalists to claim prizes at the April competition. Tropi-Cool, a company specializing in Mexican ice cream treats, won $40,000 for their first-place finish.

Marriott School professor Paul Godfrey received the Civic Engagement Award for Brigham Young University from the Utah Campus Compact April 6. Godfrey, associate professor of strategy, was honored for his work designing and implementing financial literacy programs for elementary, junior high and high schools. “The MBA practicum provides Marriott School students an excellent way to use their emerging professional skills to better the community,” Godfrey says. “Our hope is that our students leave with a richer understanding of the ways in which they can contribute to the communities where they live and work.” One faculty member and student were recognized from each of the 13 universities in Utah in a ceremony at the 2004 Utah Conference on Service at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City. For the last two years, Godfrey has worked with first- and second-year MBA st

Six MBA students from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University won first place in the Daniels Ethics Case & Race in Denver. The competition, hosted by the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, included a business ethics case competition and a downhill ski challenge.

Marriott School students, faculty and administrators are challenged to race the stairs for the BYU Annual Fund. The event will take place in the Tanner Building on March 13 from 8 a.m. to noon. Participants can run themselves or join a relay team. Individual runners are requested to give a $15 donation to the Annual Fund.

MBA and MPA students from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management teamed with students from New York University on a pilot project to help with the United Nation’s Global Compact develop a worldwide program for MBA students. Students from both universities contributed analysis of corporate citizenship activities for participating companies.

The Marriott School at Brigham Young University announces ten MBA candidates as its 2004 Hawes Scholars. The honor, which carries a cash award of $10,000, is the highest distinction given to MBA students at the school. The 2004 Marriott School Hawes Scholars are Brian Baker, of Provo, Utah; Brent Dykes, of Vancouver, British Columbia; Nathan Furr, of Boston, Mass.; Michael Hennessy, of Boston, Mass.; John Higginson, of Provo, Utah; Jessica Johnson, of Lafayette, Calif.; Jason Marx, of Hyde Park, Utah; Gretchen Olson, of Paradise, Utah; Melissa Randall, of Provo, Utah and Whitney Seamons, of New Canaan, Conn.

By combining creativity with ingenuity and resourcefulness, a team of MBA students from BYU’s Marriott School of Management won the 2003 Thunderbird Innovation Challenge, coming in first out of 154 MBA student teams from around the world. The five second-year MBA students—who beat teams from Duke and Harvard—pocketed $20,000 for their inventive ideas and were named “The Most Innovative MBA Team in the World.” “It was an honor for us to meet and compete with talented MBA students from around the world,” says Scott Porter, an MBA student from Las Vegas, Nev.

Like a good husband, David Bateman listened when his wife complained about inefficient software used at the apartment complex where she worked. Then, like a good entrepreneur, the Brigham Young University business student started a company to make the most of the situation. Bateman's company, Property Solutions International, Inc., and the business model he helped develop worked so well it won Fortune Small Business magazine's first nationwide business plan competition.

In an economy characterized by receding retirement funds and a volatile stock market, a group of BYU MBA students beat the odds – and 18 other universities - to earn a 32 percent return on their portfolio. Sponsors of the competition, brokerage firm D.A. Davidson & Co., awarded the Marriott School's Peery Institute with a $7,000 check for successfully managing the company's $50,000 investment portfolio throughout last year.

Students at Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management selected two of their classmates and a professor to receive the 2003 Merrill J. Bateman Awards. These honors, now in their second year, are the only awards chosen solely by business school students. Student leaders joined President Bateman and Dean Ned Hill to recognize Aaron Ashby and Nick Newton with Merrill J. Bateman Outstanding Student Awards and Professor Steven Thorley with the Merrill J. Bateman Student Choice Award.

Despite being one teammate short, arriving at the competition with only five minutes to spare and having to begin planning their case in a car by flashlight, a team of three students from BYU’s Marriott School recently placed second at an international business ethics competition. The team consisting of Isaac Appiah, Rick Bingham and Marcie Holloman competed against four-person teams from 14 other universities at the Net Impact 2003 International Case Competition hosted by the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Having friends in high places has its benefits, and in Malaysia the benefits are worth billions. Brigham Young University and MIT researchers recently measured the impact of cronyism — favoring friends and political allies — on Malaysian companies' stock values. Their research showed that companies with political connections regained stock value much more quickly than other companies, following restrictions imposed by the government during the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s.

The Financial Times of London advanced Brigham Young University's Marriott School for the second consecutive year in the paper's global ranking of top 100 MBA programs. The Marriott School ranked 51st this year compared to 63rd in 2002 and 75th in 2001. In addition to the overall ranking, the school's alumni placed its finance program among the top 10 worldwide.

Brigham Young University's Marriott School has launched a major initiative to improve minority representation in the school's graduate programs. The diversity initiative is designed to recruit a more diverse student body and faculty; provide students and faculty with cultural awareness and sensitivity to diversity issues; and improve the school's internal climate to be more supportive of female, international, and minority students and faculty.

In spite of a tough placement environment and dipping salaries for new graduates, Brigham Young University's MBA program held on to the best buy title in Business Week's 2002 ranking of top business programs. BYU's Marriott School had the best return on investment with only 4.1 years to payback, including the two years at school.

The Strategic Management Society awarded four Brigham Young University Professors the best paper prize last week at the organization’s 22nd annual conference in Paris, France. The best paper prize was awarded to Marriott School strategy professors Mark H. Hansen and Lee T. Perry and BYU statistics professors C. Shane Reese and Gilbert W. Fellingham for their paper, “A Bayesian Application of the Resource-Based View: Narrowing the Gap Between Theory and Practice.” “We had a lot of confidence that the theory and methods we developed were revolutionary,” says Perry.

Brigham Young University's business school moved from 41st to 38th in The Wall Street Journal's 2002 ranking of top business schools worldwide. The BYU Marriott School also rose from fifth to third place in the newspaper's "hidden gems" category, a listing of "schools that produce excellent graduates but aren't typically considered top-tier business schools."