The Marriott Undergraduate Student Association at Brigham Young University, in conjunction with Dillard’s, invites students to its first annual case competition Nov. 18 at 2 p.m. in room 251 of the Tanner Building. The case competition will give business students experience problem-solving an international strategy situation taken from a real-world example.

The fall eBusiness Day, themed "eGlobal: Connect Locally, Act Globally," will demonstrate how the world is being connected through technology. The event will be held on Friday, Nov. 11, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the second floor atrium and in room 251 of the Tanner Building. Two keynote speakers, Paul Allen and Josh James, will elaborate on how people and organizations around the world are connecting via technology and the Internet. Allen will be speaking on "Approaching Omniscience — Access to all Information and to all the People in the World" at 9 a.m. "You can learn anything and meet anyone using the power of technology," Allen says.

The 2006 edition of The Princeton Review’s “Best 237 Business Schools” named BYU’s Marriott School the nation’s “Most Family-Friendly” business school. “This should come as no surprise,” says Jim Stice, MBA director. “Since our goals and objectives of the MBA program are aligned with those of the Church, it is our responsibility and commitment to be family-friendly.” The “Most Family-Friendly” ranking is based on a student assessment of: how happy married students are, how helpful the school is to students with children and how much the school does for the spouses of students.

Google’s announcement last week that it has earmarked $265 million of the money raised in its public stock offering for charity resurrects a long-standing debate over whether or not companies should be involved in philanthropic efforts. And although detractors contend that money spent on charity should go back into shareholders’ pockets, a new study in the “Academy of Management Review” by a Brigham Young University business professor argues that a track record of corporate giving protects a company much like an insurance policy, adding to overall value and shielding shareholders’ investment in the event of misfortune.

How much does it cost to start a small chicken farm in Kenya? How about beginning a handbag business in the Philippines or opening a small clothing shop in New York? “Small Fortunes: Microcredit and the Future of Poverty” is an hour-long documentary that discusses how micro-lending institutions are helping people escape poverty.

A hot dog stand doesn’t quite sound like a business about to take over the world. But with the kind of attention J Dawgs is getting, especially after winning this year’s BYU Entrepreneur of the Year Competition, the little hot dog stand just south of campus has its sights set on becoming one of the big dogs.

The Marriott School Web Analytics Competition, hosted by the Rollins Center for eBusiness, is looking for an innovative student team. Past eBusiness competitions have challenged student teams to design Web sites or come up with creative solutions to improve existing sites. This semester the eBusiness Center has teamed with Omniture to present a new competition allowing anyone with critical thinking skills to compete.

Securing thousands of dollars in capital for a new business and preparing a term paper for an English 315 class is multitasking on another level. For those over achievers who juggle starting a business venture while in college, the Center for Entrepreneurship has a proposition for you. BYU’s 14th annual Student Entrepreneur of the Year competition will offer winners more than $40,000 in cash and in-kind services from supporters of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Winners walk away with capital and resources to start their businesses.

The Wall Street Journal has for the second consecutive year placed the Marriott School’s MBA program in the top ten among smaller (regional) programs worldwide. The school ranked sixth in 2005 and was fifth in 2004. BYU moved up among schools listed for excellence in accountancy to fourth and retained its second place standing, behind Yale, as the best place to hire graduates with high ethical standards.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. Roughly 250 Marriott School accounting students are about to participate in the campus’ first Pit Crew Challenge, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The team-building event will take place Thursday and Friday in the Marriott Center parking lot, and Saturday in the Wilkinson Student Center parking lot south of the law school.

Brigham Young University is ranked 71st in U.S.News & World Report's annual survey, "America's Best Colleges," with the Marriott School's undergraduate program ranked among the top 50 in "Best Business Programs," coming in at 35th. The Aug. 29 issue of U.S.News & World Report, which hits newsstands Monday, ranks about 1,400 four-year accredited colleges and universities by mission and region.

The Marriott School has caught the eye of CEOs according to a new poll by Chief Executive magazine. The survey, released in the publication’s July 2005 issue, asked magazine subscribers to name their top 10 business school programs from BusinessWeek’s top 25 b-schools. However, the 477 respondents didn’t limit views to the likes of Wharton, Sloan and Columbia. They also nominated BYU along with a few other business programs.

The Marriott School announces the division of the School of Accountancy and Information Systems into two parts: the School of Accountancy and the Information Systems Department. The change resulted from numerous discussions among BYU faculty and administration. The School of Accountancy started in 1976 when it was first named the Institute of Professional Accountancy.

Ask Francine Giani what she has learned over the past 15 years, and she is likely to jump into discussing graduate courses on budgeting and planning. That’s not typical fare coming from a forty-five-year-old married mother of two, but this month Giani was tapped to be the new executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce.

Business Week recently named Provo one of the best five cities for entrepreneurs, citing factors such as BYU’s entrepreneurial students and the city’s competitive tax rates. Students’ missionary service was also highlighted. “Because students have gone on missions, they’re not afraid to go out on their own,” says Don Livingstone, director of the Marriott School’s Center for Entrepreneurship, in the article.

One month after Alianza won BYU’s Business Plan Competition, the company placed in the top eight and received the Outstanding Business Plan Award in their division during the 22nd annual Global MOOT CORP Competition. On May 7 at the University of Texas at Austin, 40 teams of MBA students competed from top schools around the world including London Business School, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern University and Thammasat University.

Marriott School information systems students received top marks during the National Collegiate Conference in Atlanta April 7-9. BYU students placed first and second in a database design contest and received honorable mentions for system analysis and design. About 800 students representing 88 schools across the nation attended this year’s conference.

Students at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management selected two of their classmates and a professor to receive the 2005 Merrill J. Bateman Awards – the only school-wide awards selected entirely by students. Julie Dougall, a Masters of Accountancy student, and Brian Crapo, an undergraduate business management student, received the Merrill J. Bateman Outstanding Student Awards.

Brigham Young University’s Marriott School is named one of the best collegiate entrepreneurship programs in the United States. In the April 2005 issue of Entrepreneur magazine, BYU appears in the first tier of the top 50 regional programs in the country. “This honor is one of many external validations of what we are teaching here,” says Donald Livingston, director of the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. “We have a lot of entrepreneurial activity here on campus, including the largest business plan competition in the country.

Brigham Young University’s Romney Institute of Public Management named Olene S. Walker, former governor of Utah, as the 2005 Administrator of the Year. A scholarship was also founded in her honor. “Through my years of involvement in the private sector, in the public sector and with my family, I have found that money, fame, and power do not bring happiness,” Walker told guests at a banquet in her honor.