D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson (SFS ’92, G ’07) joined Georgetown University President Jack DeGioia in announcing a specially tailored MSB graduate program for 25 DCPS principals at a launch event held Tuesday night.

Georgetown University and several donors are subsidizing the program, through which the principals get a degree in Executive Master’s in Leadership. Henderson, who graduated from the University’s EML program in 2007, helped David Thomas, Dean of the MSB, and Senior Associate Dean Paul Almeida create an EML program that specifically serves the needs of DCPS principals.

“This program … represents a major investment in developing the kind of leadership culture in a school system that can be transformative,” Thomas said.

Classes will meet on the weekends, beginning Jan. 25 and ending in December 2013, and, some weekends, classes will be held at DCPS locations. Almeida hopes that the faculty can see what DCPS principals experience to better teach the skills these educators need, according to the school website.

“The school is really the unit of change,” said Henderson, who arrived wearing blue and gray and a Jack the Bulldog sticker on her cheek. “We need absolutely fantastic educators in front of every single classroom, but great educators won’t come and wont stay and won’t do their best unless there are great leaders in a school creating an environment for that to happen.”

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Apparently, having Donald Glover perform on Wednesday wasn’t enough to fill Georgetown’s famous person quota for the month of September. Next week brings the arrival of a few more celebrities to the Hilltop, for talks not only about performing arts, but about humanitarianism and justice in Africa.

The first up is an event on Wednesday, September 14, about the Conflict-Free Campus Initiative, and its speakers are actress Robin Wright, field researcher Fidel Bafilemba, and author and activist John Prendergast. Conflict-Free Campus Initiative is a national project aimed at encouraging students not to purchase electronics for which the profits fund the war in the East Congo. Wright, who recently visited Africa with Raise Hope for the Congo, is new to the organization’s growing list of celebrity endorsers, which includes the likes of Ryan Gosling.

The other two speakers are much better known for their work with justice for the Congolese. Prendergast is co-founder of The Enough Project, which aims at ending genocide and crimes against humanity, and for which Bafilemba is a researcher and blogger. The event is is co-sponsored by the Georgetown University African Studies Program, and takes place at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday night in the ICC 7th Floor Executive Conference Room. Due to limited space, students should reserve their spots in advance.

The next stop on the Georgetown Celebrity Tour is on Thursday, September 15, at 4:30 p.m. in the Hariri Building. This talk features Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis, who is discussing the “role of women in the movies” as part of the McDonough School of Business’s Distinguished Leaders Lecture series. Davis, who is also an accomplished athlete and member of Mensa, is highly qualified to speak on the subject, as she is the founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which promotes the improvement of women’s portrayals in entertainment, especially in those targeted towards young children. Space on this event is also limited, so RSVP is required.

H/T Ecorazzi, photo from the Geena Davis Institute.

David A. Thomas, a professor of business administration and former associate dean of Harvard Business School, has been appointed dean of the McDonough School of Business, according to an email sent by university president John DeGioia. Professor Thomas’s appointment is effective August 1, when he will succeed outgoing dean George Daly.

“A recognized thought leader in the area of strategic human resource management, Dean Thomas’s research addresses issues related to executive development, cultural diversity in organizations, leadership and organizational change,” DeGioia wrote.

Professor Thomas earned a B.A. in administrative sciences as well as an M.A. and doctorate in philosophy from Yale. In addition, he earned an M.A. in organizational psychology from Columbia, according to his Harvard faculty profile.

The university announcement of  Thomas’s appointment notes that the professor has served on the faculty of Harvard Business School since 1990. During his tenure, Thomas has served in roles including associate dean, director of faculty recruitment, and faculty chair of the school’s Executive Education Program. Prior to joining Harvard’s faculty, Thomas was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance.

This week, Vox wanted to give the Class of 2014 a sneak peek into each of Georgetown University’s four schools. Today, we take a look at the McDonough School of Business.

Business students get special treatment

While your non-MSB friends will have to put up with the utterly ineffective UIS (at least for a little longer), business school students get access to technological resources that actually belong in the 21st century. Chief among them is the MSB Tech Center, a competent, accessible alternative to UIS. Located on the first floor of the Hariri Building, the Tech Center is staffed with trained students who can help you troubleshoot most computer issues during walk-in hours.

In addition to tech support, the Tech Center also facilitates all the other technological services that MSB students get access to, which includes the MSB’s printing services. Despite what students from other schools might think, not actually free (check your bill for a $75 “MSB Lab Fee”), but the 1000 pages business students are given to print each semester are still a better deal than paying at Lau. They’re a lot more convenient too: using the iPrint software, students can print to nearly every printer in Hariri and pick up their paper on the way to class.

Even the MSB’s one previous technological weak spot, e-mail, has been turned into an advantage starting this semester with the transition from the cumbersome Groupwise system to Google Mail. And unlike the other schools’ UIS-provided Google Mail, the MSB’s offers a wide array of other services, including Google Docs, Calendar, and Talk (a.k.a. GChat).

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A year after the other schools jumped on the Gmail bandwagon, the McDonough School of Business is making the switch to Google-provided email. And, in the long tradition of MSBers getting way nicer stuff than everyone else, their Gmail accounts will come fully equipped with apps like Gchat, Google Calendar and Google Docs—a perk kids in the College, SFS and NHS still don’t have.

According to MSB Chief Technology Officer John Carpenter, it was easier for the MSB to adopt full-service Gmail because MSB students have always had separate passwords for their email and University accounts. Because students in the other schools use their netID and password for both functions, University Information Services worried that giving Google students’ netIDs and passwords would be a security issue and thus opted for the minimalist, web-only version of Gmail that allows them to more easily withhold that information.

Another concern UIS Director Beth Ann Bergsmark cited about enhancing Gmail accounts was that some apps might overlap with services offered by Blackboard and thus create confusion about which system to use. Carpenter said he did not see the Blackboard overlap issue to be a major problem and that he anticipates MSB students will continue to use Blackboard in addition to the new Google apps.

Bergsmark—who did not respond to requests for comments for this post—told Vox last July that UIS would be forming a working group to look into what apps to add, but as of November little progress had been made.

“I think the [rest of] the University will come around,” Carpenter said.

Let’s hope so. Until then, looks like non-MSBers will have to continue forwarding their Georgetown-based “Gmail” to their real Gmail accounts.

As expected, the Rafik B. Hariri Building has been awarded LEED certification for its environmentally-friendly features. Georgetown applied for LEED Certification, which is awarded to buildings that are sustainable, and water, energy, resource, and material efficient, during the fall semester.

LEED certification is awarded by the U. S. Green Building Council, a non-profit organization which bills the award as the “nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings,” but LEED certification has been criticized for similarly weighting expensive green features with large environmental impacts and inexpensive projects with minimal impact.

According to a press release from the Georgetown McDonough School of Business, the following are some of the features that the LEED certification recognized:

“• An expected energy savings of 15 percent through efficient lighting design and controls
• A 41 percent water use reduction through use of ultra low flow fixtures and dual-flush water closets
• Water-efficient landscaping
• Building materials that contain recycled content and were manufactured locally
• More than half of the construction waste – 800 tons – was recycled and re-used
• Bicycle storage facilities, proximity to public transportation, and several preferred parking spaces for hybrid and electric vehicles
• Low-emitting paints, adhesives, sealants and carpeting
• Manufacturing 25 percent of the total building materials using recycled materials
• Local products, in that nearly 31 percent of the total building materials were extracted, harvested, or recovered, as well as manufactured, within 500 miles of the project site.”

“From the fluidized bed coal boiler in 1979, to the solar panels we installed on the Bunn Intercultural Center in 1982, to our fuel cell buses, Georgetown has long been green,” President John DeGioia said of the award. “We’ve done so because of a dedication to the principle of sustainability.”

The University has committed getting LEED certification for all of its new structures.

When they’re not in the classroom, some MBA students at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business are playing in Ultimate 4 Basketball, a student-run, philanthropic basketball tournament that Georgetown has hosted for 21 years straight.

This year, Georgetown won $11,000 from corporate sponsors for the Washington, D.C. chapter of Teach For America, the most in the tournament’s history according to the MSB news website. They topped their $8,500 take from last year.

U4 is the longest-running league of its kind in the country. It took place over Valentine’s day weekend this year among 24 teams from 17 schools. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business took first, and Georgetown finished in the top six.

Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business was ranked the 23rd best undergraduate business program in the country by BusinessWeek Magazine’s 2010 rankings. The MSB saw improvements in nearly every judging criteria: “Teaching Quality” (A+, A in 2009), “Facilities” (B, C in 2009), and “Job Placement” (A+, C in 2009).

The completion of the Rafik. B. Hariri Building certainly had an effect not only on the Facilities subcategory, but on Georgetown students overall impression of the business program. In fact, the most telling statistic about how we’ve improved may be the school’s student survey ranking: 29th in 2010, up from 72nd in 2009. 2009’s MSB graduates were also tied for the 2nd highest median starting salary in the country.

Last week, the Financial Times published its list of the world’s best Global MBA Programs (PDF), where it ranked Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business Full-time MBA Program 38th. Up two spots from the 2009 list (PDF), Georgetown’s program snagged a job placement effectiveness ranking of 32nd, a faculty research ranking of 55th, and the “value for the money” ranking of 83rd.

The school’s weighted alumni salary fell only slightly this year, to $121,402, from $121,786. More strikingly, the number of Georgetown MBA students who found employment within three months of graduation dropped drastically from 98 percent in 2009 to 78 percent in 2010.

“I’ll be back.”

Two years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger reiterated the famous phrase during a speech at Georgetown. Last night, he kept his promise. The California Governor offered influential words to a community of business leaders at a dinner event celebrating the new Rafik B. Hariri Building of the McDonough School of Business.

George Daly, Dean of the MSB, presented the Georgetown dad with the school’s Dean’s Medal in honor of Schwarzenegger’s leadership in entertainment, athletics, and public policy.

Daly commemorated Schwarzenegger as someone who has “represented the best qualities of the American national character.” The Governor, who holds a business degree from the University of Wisconsin, acknowledged his belief in a “business aspect to everything.” He attributes the success of his career to his affinity for entrepreneurship.

Reflecting on his body building career, he recalled, “While I was pumping iron, they [the business leaders] were pumping their wallets.” Thus, his self-marketed career began. According to Schwarzenegger, refined marketing and promotional skills serve as the key elements to successful business. His “30 Cities in 30 Days” book tour as a body builder and dedication to international promotion as an actor facilitated his phenomenal achievements.

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