SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Port operators in Savannah, Ga. are racing to upgrade their facilities for the rising generation of big ships, which will have a new lane from Asia when the Panama Canal completes a 10-year widening project in 2016. Rivals are eyeing the same big ships in Charleston, S.C. And in Boston, Houston, Miami and many other ports along the Gulf and East Coasts — like the reality television series where many bachelors vie for the attention of the same bachelorette.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Software firm Adobe announced this week it will expand its family paid-leave benefits -- including up to six months for birth mothers. This follows

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is happy to welcome nine new faculty members for the 2015-2016 academic year. New faculty joined the Smith School in August in following areas: Accounting and Information Assurance

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- Customers have kvetched about airline baggage fees since American Airlines started charging people for even one checked bag in 2008, but the practice has swept the industry. Last month, JetBlue started charging passengers for luggage, leaving Southwest standing alone as the only company to let all passengers check a bag or two without an extra charge.

Brazilian immigrant Viviane Hembrock ’13 grew up surrounded by the shipping industry. Her hometown of Santos, São Paulo, processes more than 3.5 million cargo containers annually, making it the busiest port in Latin America. “My city was all about logistics,” Hembrock says. So a supply chain career seemed natural when she came to Baltimore as an au pair and found an opportunity to study at the University of Maryland.

The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland is recognized as one of the top research institutions in the world, but it is also a place where students can learn from some of the best teachers in the business. Each year, Smith awards three different honors to its faculty members who have demonstrated a passion for teaching excellence: The Distinguished Teaching Awards, the Krowe Teaching Excellence Awards and the Legg-Mason Award.

The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business community came together to celebrate the achievements of full-time MBA students at the 4th Annual MBA End-of-the-Year Banquet on May 14, 2015, held at the College Park Marriott Hotel and Conference Center.

Companies work fairly hard to place one woman — but only one — in a top management position, according to research by Cristian Dezső, an associate professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, and two co-authors. The article found evidence of a “quota” effect: Once a company had appointed one woman to a top-tier job, the chances of a second woman landing an elite position at the same firm drop substantially — by about 50 percent, in fact.

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On April 10, 2015, the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business partnered with Disaster Recovery Institute (DRI) International to hold DRI’s first collegiate conference. More than 100 DRI-certified professionals, business continuity planning leaders and students were in attendance.