Mayor Vincent Gray is working with real estate and developing company Wilkes Co. to draft a proposal for a 600,000-square-foot university village at 300 M Street Northeast for Georgetown and other D.C. universities to lease. This proposal comes in light of the Mayor’s five-year plan for economic growth.

Gray envisions this academic village as one that includes student and faculty housing, lecture and seminar halls, as well as gymnasiums and cafeterias. The village would be accessible by the NoMa-Galludet U Metro Station.

“This has the potential to be an absolutely ground-breaking and world-class opportunity,” Company Chairman Sandy Wilkes said to the Washington Business Journal. 

The University has not expressed explicit formal support or consideration of the proposal. GW’s business dean Doug Guthrie publicly supported the concept of the proposal.

“Participating in an academic village would certainly be one of the ideas we would consider as we actively look for new opportunities around the District and the region where we can expand and grow our academic programs,” University spokeswoman Stacy Kerr wrote in an email to Vox. 

The dean of the McDonough School of Business is currently communicating with Wilkes and the dean from GW’s business school to see if this project is viable.

Read the rest of this entry »

When James Li (MSB ’13) began his freshman year at Georgetown, the traditional paths of finance and international banking were on the horizon. “It was sort of a struggle to see a path that was different from that,” he said. “I didn’t really have that many thoughts about entrepreneurship.”

Four years later, Li and two other Georgetown students are now in the limelight for an application they created to assist nonprofits share their stories and engage with donors. This “interactive, story-based email communications platform,” called Encore, was voted last Thursday as D.C.’s “Hottest Start-Up” in a showcase of 25 selected D.C. startups, organized by a tech media company Tech Cocktail.

Li describes Encore as a way to help nonprofits in D.C. focus on their relationships with donors. The web app allows grassroots organizations to quickly and easily tell supporters about the latest initiatives. Encore will also provide nonprofits with the analytics and information on donor activity and behavior.

They were among the youngest founders out of the 25 startups featured at the event. Last Friday, Li and the other co-founders, CFO Michael Hauser (MSB ’13), and Tammy Cho (MSB ’16) of Encore went all the way to San Fransisco, California, for the one of the largest nonprofit conferences in the nation, to meet and publicize their newly launched web app to an audience of almost 900 nonprofits. Also on their staff is Elle Kang (SFS ’15).

Read the rest of this entry »

Legendary U2 rock star Bono was made to feel right at home when a full audience at Gaston Hall welcomed him Monday evening. Just when we thought Bono’s keynote address would focus on social enterprise and the power of social movements to foster change, his speech was more accurately about social activism, the economic recession in America, his view on the presidential debates, and Africa.

The event was co-sponsored by Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan and spearheaded by Professor Bill Neveli, the founder of the Global Social Enterprise Initiative at the McDonough School of Business. Bono thanked Moynihan, describing him as “a gentleman in a world where that quality isn’t always on tap,” for his help funding U2′s initiative to provide free music lessons to children in Ireland.

Bono opened his speech by mocking the political mudslinging during this past week’s presidential election. He admitted, jokingly, that he spends a good deal of time with politicians, and found the attack ad campaigns distasteful. The Washington Post recently reported that Bono has visited the White House five times in the past four years, including one private meeting with the president.

“I may need to grab another pint at The Tombs,” he joked. He found the political attack ads difficult to watch. “I’d rather see an attack ad on malaria…the riot of social activism.”

The singer discussed also touched on some serious issues and global health concerns, specifically those that plague Africa. Throughout his career, Bono has founded several initiatives and grassroots campaigns to address rampant poverty and disease in Africa.

Read the rest of this entry »

After last week’s retraction, the McDonough School of Business Communications Department finally established that Bono will be talking about social enterprise at Georgetown next Monday. In the new event description, Bono’s lecture is described as a talk about social enterprise and the “power of social movements to create change.”

CEO of Bank of America Brian Moynihan will introduce Bono with remarks, followed by President John J. DeGioia. 

The Atlantic will also be the media partner for this event. This means Georgetown will host the first event in this year’s Washington Ideas Forum, which lasts from November 13 to 15th. The forum is a partnership between The Atlantic, the Aspen Institute, and the Newseum to bring together top international leaders for a series of lectures.

Last year’s Washington Ideas Forum hosted speakers such as Vice President Joe Biden and House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan,  as well as the CEO of Starbucks and Katie Couric.

This MSBro offers valuable advice on surviving life in the MSB. However, he makes the mistake of assuming students in the MSB actually have real problems.

Some say that when Conor Rogers‘ question is answered, the world ends. Others simply roll their eyes, push their abnormally large glasses up on their nose, and proceed to change the midi file on their Myspace page.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re enrolled in the MSB right now, you’re doing yourself a big favor.  Not only will you heighten your appeal to future employers, but your time at Georgetown will be exponentially more…comfortable than the rest of the student body.  Here’s a laundry list of why your SFS friends will be unfathomably jealous of your freshman year:

The Building

The Rafik B. Hariri building is the pride of the McDonough School of Business.  This state of the art structure is littered with fully equipped classrooms (you never have to worry about finding a power outlet), capacious study spaces to save you from the macabre behemoth known as Lauinger Library, and an undergraduate commons area stocked with printers and scanners.  Which brings us to the next perk:

1000 Free* Prints per Semester

As your buddies will soon tell you, printing in Lauinger is a pain in the derriere.  Fortunately, under the auspices of MSB’s Tech Center, business students can  print up to 1000 free (*and by free, I mean it’s included as a Lab Fee in your tuition, but you can keep that fact from your peers) pages in the familiar halls of Harriri.

Bagels with the Dean

Once a week, the benevolent MSB deans pile loads of bagels and coffee onto a table for a schmooze-sesh with the undergrads.  Trust me, this is a big deal.

Read the rest of this entry »

At some point in her life, just about every girl dreams of being an actress, lighting up the silver screen in daring and glamorous roles.  But in her presentation in the Hariri building yesterday, Academy-Award winner Geena Davis explained why, in this age, such aspirations are very difficult to achieve.

The McDonough School of Business and the Georgetown University Women’s Leadership Initiative welcomed Davis to campus yesterday afternoon as part of the MSB’s Distinguished Leaders Lecture Series.  Davis shared with the audience the work of her non-profit organization, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which researches why modern cinema features so few women in strong roles and seeks to raise awareness in filmmakers about this disparity.

The Institute has undertaken the largest amount of research that has ever been done on how women are portrayed in films and television.  The findings are often sought out by non-governmental organizations, and companies concerned with female empowerment.

Davis began her mission when she noticed the gender imbalance in the films targeted at her young children.

“I was so horrified at what they were watching,” she said. “ Unconsciously, they’re just taking in this message that girls are less important than boys.”

The Institute has found that female characters generally fit a weak, over-sexualized mold.  “In animated films, most of the female characters have a body type that couldn’t exist in real life… they very often don’t have room for a spinal column!” Davis said.

At 6’1”, Davis does not fit this stereotype of female physicality.  She started her career in modeling in attempt to segue into acting, but was very self-conscious about her height and looks.

“I was so sure that I was not attractive and that I was tricking them somehow, that I knew how to act that my butt looked good,” she said.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week, Vox wanted to give the Class of 2015 a sneak peek into each of Georgetown University’s four undergraduate schools. Today, we take a look at the McDonough School of Business (MSB).

The best school, technically

Or technologically, but semantics are for College students. While your non-MSB friends will have to put up with the utterly ineffective UIS, 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, it’s 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 from their laptop to any printer in Hariri and pick up their paper on the way to class.

If the MSB is evil, this is its Death Star

Until the new science building is completed, the MSB’s Rafik B. Hariri Building holds the title of Georgetown’s most modern class building. Just two years old, it’s not a stretch to call Hariri (sometimes called the BSB, or simply “the business school”) the nicest building on campus, with all the amenities you need to get through four years in the b-school. The building is home to nearly all MSB classes, as well as professors’ and administrators’ offices.

However, classrooms and offices only take up a small portion of Hariri. A large part of the building’s interior consists of the Simone McDonough space, four open floors filled with plenty of seating that make for a popular study spot. If you prefer to be a little less out in the open, there’s also the undergraduate commons located on the first floor and a number of breakout rooms that can be reserved for groups. There’s not an overwhelming amount of room, but it’s more than enough to attract the jealousy of the masses cooped up in Lau. Read the rest of this entry »

Jessica Fashano (MSB ’05), an investment banking associate with Citi Global Markets died Saturday in an apparent suicide, jumping from the Trump Place in New York.

During her time at Citi, Fashano led the fundraising efforts of the company for campaigns to raise money for New Yorkers in need. She also participated in fundraising for the Acumen Fund, an organization that invests in businesses serving the poor in developing countries.

Fashano had been treated for depression, but her friends and family were shocked to hear about her suicide. She did not leave a note, and a resident of the apartment complex where she jumped from told The New York Times that she seemed “alert and aware,” asking the resident how to get to the roof.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Georgetown University Student Association Senate took a break from SAFE reform on Sunday to take aim at a different scourge—undergraduate access to the McDonough School of Business’s Hariri building.

Senator Nathaniel Tisa (SFS ’14), with the co-sponsorship of the GUSA Senate’s Academic Affairs Committee, introduced a bill that encouraged open access to Hariri’s lounges and lobbies for the general undergraduate body.

Currently, only MSB students can access the building after 10 p.m. According to Tisa, the limited accessibility was meant to secure expensive equipment that business school students use, such as Bloomberg machines.

“It doesn’t make sense that the whole building is shut down,” he said.

Read the rest of this entry »