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The newspaper of The Johns Hopkins University December 11, 2006 | Vol. 36 No. 14
 
JHU Launches New Schools of Business and Education

Innovative MBA program supported by $50 million Carey Gift

By Dennis O'Shea
Homewood

[Note: This story appears online in advance of the Dec. 11, 2006, print edition of The Gazette.]

Johns Hopkins University trustees, in response to a $50 million gift for business education, voted Dec. 4 to establish both an innovative new business school to produce leaders with broad, interdisciplinary preparation and an education school dedicated to the most pressing needs of the nation's public schools.

The Carey Business School and the School of Education will both begin operations Jan. 1, building new and distinctive programs on the foundation created by the university's School of Professional Studies in Business and Education, which will cease to exist.

William Polk Carey

The Carey Business School will be launched with a $100 million funding plan, $50 million in the form of a gift from trustee emeritus William Polk Carey through his W.P. Carey Foundation. It is the largest gift ever to Johns Hopkins in support of business education. The university will raise the additional $50 million from other donors. Carey is chairman of W.P. Carey & Co. LLC, a New York City real estate investment firm.

"More than a century ago, Johns Hopkins University forever broke the mold in American medical and graduate education, establishing revolutionary new approaches that remain central even today to the preparation of physicians and scholars," said William R. Brody, president of the university. "Bill Carey's generosity makes it possible for Johns Hopkins to break the mold again, this time in the education of our nation's leaders in finance, industry and entrepreneurship."

The Carey School, Brody said, will make its mark producing leaders armed with both specialized business skills and cross-disciplinary knowledge from other top-ranked Johns Hopkins programs. Already, SPSBE in cooperation with other Johns Hopkins schools offers joint master's/MBA programs in biotechnology, public health and nursing. It also has an MBA program in medical services management and certificate programs in the business of medicine and business of nursing.

The Carey Business School will further develop such programs, Brody said, and add a five-year BA-BS/MBA option for liberal arts and engineering majors from the university's undergraduate programs. Students seeking admission to the five-year program may prepare for graduate-level management education by taking the W.P. Carey Minor in Entrepreneurship and Management, established in 1996, in addition to their undergraduate majors.

"The key to future economic growth is quality business education, and this school will be dedicated to producing our country's next generation of business leaders," said Carey, who said the establishment of a business school at Johns Hopkins had been a dream of his for more than 50 years.

"Johns Hopkins, one of the leading universities in the world, has played an important role in the history of my family," Carey said. "I am pleased that 130 years after its founding by my cousin Johns Hopkins, I am able to add to his legacy by enhancing the university's contributions of knowledge to the world."

The gift to Johns Hopkins marks Carey's second $50 million gift in support of business education. His 2003 donation to Arizona State University established the W.P. Carey School of Business there. The new Johns Hopkins school is named for his great-great-great-grandfather James Carey of Loudon, an 18th- and 19th-century Baltimore shipper, member of Baltimore's first city council, chairman of the Bank of Maryland and relative of university founder Johns Hopkins. James Carey is an ancestor of a number of trustees of the university and The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The university is launching immediately a national search for a dean of the Carey Business School, Brody said. The dean must be a business expert with the energy and creativity to make a reality of a new vision for business education and to build the school into a recognized leader among the nation's business schools.

The dean of the School of Education will be Ralph Fessler, a Johns Hopkins faculty member and academic leader since 1983 who became interim dean of SPSBE in 1999 and has served as dean since 2000.

Under his leadership, Brody said, the School of Education will bring research-based approaches to bear on the top priority needs of the nation's pre-K to 12th-grade public schools:

Training excellent teachers, including those recruited from among midcareer professionals or from other nontraditional sources.

Retaining those teachers in the classrooms where they are most needed.

Developing quality principals and other school leaders.

Helping children with special needs reach their full potential.

Developing proven, research-based curricular reforms focused on school improvement, and

Ensuring a safe school environment.

"Johns Hopkins already awards about 500 master's degrees in education a year, more than any other Maryland institution," Brody said. "A free-standing School of Education under Dr. Fessler's leadership will have the freedom to become even more innovative in building relationships with Maryland schools and in developing best practices for school-university partnerships nationwide."

Fessler said a recently opened state-of-the-art headquarters for the Baltimore-based operations of the school--in the former Seton High School building on North Charles Street--provides a major head start in developing a School of Education that will be a national leader in pre-K-12 school reform.

"The Johns Hopkins School of Education will be known for its outreach to school administrators, teachers and the children they serve," Fessler said.

Carey's $50 million commitment counts toward the total of the Johns Hopkins Knowledge for the World campaign, which, as of Nov. 30, had raised more than $2.349 billion toward its goal of $3.2 billion by the end of 2008. Priorities of the campaign, which benefits both The Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, include strengthening endowment for student aid and faculty support; advancing research, academic and clinical initiatives; and building and upgrading facilities on all campuses. The campaign began in July 2000.

GO TO Q&A ON THE CAREY BUSINESS SCHOOL AND SCHOOL OF EDUCATION.
GO TO DECEMBER 11, 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GO TO THE GAZETTE FRONT PAGE.


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