The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, for 51 years the leader in increasing the ranks of underrepresented minorities in business education and corporate leadership, has expanded its reach among the nation’s top MBA programs with the addition of Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.
The Houston-based university, consistently ranked as a top-20 program, officially joins The Consortium on July 1, 2017, following approval on June 13 by The Consortium’s board of trustees and the signing of the university’s membership agreement on June 19.
“The partnership with Rice University in furthering our mission is an excellent opportunity for both of us,” said Peter J. Aranda III, The Consortium’s executive director and CEO. “We’re excited by the leadership commitment at the Jones Graduate School of Business to diversity and inclusion — and, in particular, we recognize the high priority Dean Peter Rodriguez places in this area.”
Rodriguez, the first Latino dean at Rice University, assumed the post less than a year ago and has consistently spoken of the importance of increasing diversity in the ranks of MBA schools and corporate leadership. Rodriguez was previously senior associate dean for degree programs and chief diversity officer at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business — another Consortium member school.
Below: Dean Peter Rodriguez speaks about his school’s commitment to diversity.
“Enrolling more underrepresented minorities and getting diverse talent is one of our key priorities for the school,” Rodriguez said. “Membership in the highly impactful Consortium will allow us to cultivate relationships with prospective students earlier and build connections with other universities.”
The addition of Rice marks the first expansion in The Consortium’s membership since 2013, when Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business joined. During Aranda’s nearly 14-year tenure as executive director, The Consortium has added five new schools to its membership — Yale University; Cornell University; the University of California, Los Angeles; Georgetown; and Rice. A sixth school, the University of California, Berkeley, returned in 2010 after withdrawing seven years earlier.
The Consortium works with its member schools and 75 corporate partners to increase the ranks of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in U.S. business schools and corporate leadership positions. The Consortium serves this mission by annually offering hundreds of merit-based, full-tuition fellowships to promising leaders, as well as membership in a global network of more than 9,000 diversity-minded alumni, member school representatives and corporate partners. This month, The Consortium welcomed nearly 480 new students into its program, joining an equally large class of rising second-year MBA students.
Those corporate partners — which include companies such as Google, General Mills, 3M, Johnson & Johnson and dozens more — gain early access to top-flight, diverse talent at The Consortium’s Orientation Program & Career Forum in early June each year. Coincidentally, The Consortium’s 2019 OP in two years will be staged in Rice University’s backyard in Houston, Texas.
The Consortium will begin recruiting prospective MBA students for Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business this fall, with its first class of Consortium fellows graduating in the spring of 2020.
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ABOUT THE CONSORTIUM: Founded in 1966, the vision of The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management is to increase the representation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in management careers in the United States. We realize this vision by recruiting outstanding students who have shown a commitment to diversity and connecting them with top-tier MBA programs and corporations. Learn more at cgsm.org; follow us on Facebook @cgsm.org; Twitter @cgsm_mba; and YouTube @TheCGSM. The Consortium, founded at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, now includes the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; Carnegie Mellon University; Cornell University; Dartmouth College; Emory University; Georgetown University; Indiana University-Bloomington; the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; New York University; The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Rochester University; the University of Southern California; The University of Texas at Austin; the University of Virginia; the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Yale University; and on July 1, Rice University.
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ABOUT RICE UNIVERSITY’S JONES GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS: Rice’s MBA programs, including the Rice MBA, Rice MBA for Executives and Rice MBA for Professionals, give students a comprehensive learning experience that mixes specialized coursework with real-world applications. The programs feature innovative classes, expert faculty and diverse classmates who become lifetime colleagues. Consistently recognized as a top-20 business school, the Jones School is internationally known for the research and thought leadership of its faculty. For more information on Rice MBA programs, visit http://business.rice.edu. For more information about and insights from Jones School faculty research, visit the school’s Rice Business Wisdom website, http://ricebusinesswisdom.com. Follow the Jones School via Twitter @Rice_Biz. Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.
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