The Smith School congratulates the first place winners: Kishore Radhakrishnan, Jeff Williamowsky, Asheel Kakkad, Matthew Kannan, Gursean Singh and Aaron Fagan (not pictured) with event organizers Anna Mayr, John Chukundah and Elinda Kiss. Also shown in the photograph are the judges of the competition.

Freshman get a crash course in the art of networking—from MBAs.   Networking is an essential skill in the professional’s arsenal, and you can’t get started too early. On Thursday, November 10, the Smith School’s Freshman Fellows learned how to work a room from an unusual source—Smith MBA students. The freshman got a quick presentation on tips and best practices, and then split into small groups to practice networking and present their personal elevator pitch for review.

Robert H. Smith School of Business faculty members Cliff Rossi and Dilip B. Madan are among experts selected by U.S. Treasury officials to speak at a conference on financial reform.

A sampling of retail expertise from faculty at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business reveals three different perspectives about the 2011 Christmas-holiday shopping season:

Hugh Courtney, professor of the practice of strategy and vice dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business, is among a select group of experts worldwide who contributed to a recently released report on strategic risk management.

When Christos Marafatsos ’09 and longtime friend Kosta Dionisopoulos started Delta Produce in 2009, they never dreamed that only two years later their business would be featured in Bloomberg BusinessWeek as part of an entrepreneurial contest.

What do Smith alumnus Dennis Cinelli and alumna Jamie Lee have in common? Both graduated from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business in 2005; both went to work for GE upon graduation; both joined the company’s Corporate Audit Staff; and both were awarded the company’s most prestigious award for young professionals in 2011: the Chairman’s Circle Award. “It’s an honor to win this award,” Cinelli said. “Everyone eligible for the award is doing great work and working really hard, so it was a good surprise.”

Smith MBAs Fernanda Lopez, Lacey Nguyen, and Stephen Huie won first prize in the Hitachi Pioneer Employer Curriculum Change Competition and Second Prize in the Hitachi Pioneer Employer Case Competition. The Smith team reached the final round, held at the 2011 Net Impact Conference in Portland, OR, in late October, after passing the first rounds last spring. The competition involved a case competition and curriculum change component, both focusing on the strategic human capital management of low-wage workers at the bottom of the ladder.

When Mariya Golotyuk ’10 moved to the United States from Ukraine, she never expected that less than a decade later she would be recognized as the U.S. Army Cadet Command’s Cadet of the Year. Golotyuk, who anticipates graduating with her MBA in 2012, also captured the top spot on the Order of Merit List, which ranks all Army ROTC seniors across the nation.

The executive MBA program at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is ranked #17 in the world by Bloomberg Businessweek. The Businessweek rankings are based on surveys completed by recent alumni and EMBA program directors across the world.