News & Notes: Fall 2022

Gratitude and Inspiration at the Scholarship Reception

For the first time in three years, scholars, individual donors, and corporate partners came together at the Carlson School’s Scholarship Reception, held April 26. The event provided an opportunity for Carlson School scholarship recipients to meet, interact with, and thank the benefactors who help make their Carlson School educations possible.

The sounds of laughter, storytelling, and advice filled the air as students, alumni, and friends met and mingled in the atrium. Benefactors enjoyed hearing about the coursework, internships, and extracurricular programming that current students enjoy. Scholars were able to learn about the often inspiring reasons why benefactors choose to support current and future business students.

Nick Wallace, assistant dean of the Undergraduate program, welcomed the crowd and shared a message of gratitude on behalf of the school, and outlined many direct and indirect ways that scholarship funding enhances and enriches opportunity for all at the Carlson School.

Fail Forward Fast Fund Encourages Innovative Engagement

The Carlson School has long been a leader in experiential learning encouraging students to try new ventures, take risks, and learn from their failures as well as their successes. The popular entrepreneurial programming and generations of successful leaders and changemakers launched from the University of Minnesota embody this spirit of disruption and innovation.

Now, an anonymous alum has established a fund to enable the school to offer even more experiential learning opportunities for students and foster an environment where bold actions are encouraged without fear of failure.

The first two years of this funding have been designated to the newly launched Impact Lab, which partners students with a business, nonprofit, or social enterprise to solve a real business challenge. The donor holds dearly the MBA Project B Plan experience, where students were placed with a leading Twin Cities business innovator that demanded contrary thinking and bold conclusions and wanted to offer a similar opportunity to undergraduate students. According to Vlad Griskevicius, associate dean for the Undergraduate program, “this gift provides invaluable experiences and skills to our students early in their coursework, upon which they can build during the rest of their time here at the Carlson School.”

In future years, the endowment will fund new proposals for other innovative initiatives that the associate dean says will advance “out-of-the-box” thinking for students, faculty, and staff.