Sixteen new PhD students are beginning their academic journey at the Smith School this fall. Hailing from all across the globe and from a variety of professional and academic backgrounds, these new PhDs will be researching alongside Smith's best and brightest minds.

The PhD program at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park, is No. 11 in the world and No. 8 in the U.S., according to new rankings by The Financial Times.  The rankings are based off data collected in 2013 and can be found in the fields of the Global MBA Ranking on the Financial Times business education website. 

Jared Watson was pumping gas at a Costco near Seattle when he read the email that he gotten into the PhD program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “I almost fainted,” he recalls. Watson’s dream of becoming a marketing professor was about to begin. He moved to the East Coast to begin the fall 2013 semester with Smith’s new cohort of 18 PhD students.

An arm injury on the pitching mound prompted John-Patrick Paraskevas' exit from a St. Mary's College (Md.) baseball scholarship to Van Munching Hall's classrooms and a pathway to a supply chain management PhD from the Robert H. Smith School of Business.