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Spotlight Preparing for the Future Charles F. Dolan School of Business Fairfield University Fairfield, Connecticut In the last seven years, the Charles F. Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University has acquired new credentials, a new name, a new degree program, and a new facility. After receiving AACSB accreditation in 1997, it moved into a new facility in 1998 and introduced a new MBA in public accounting in 1999. In 2000, the school was named the Charles F. Dolan School of Business in response to a $25 mil- lion gift from Dolan, the founder of Cablevision. These developments lay the time and part-time graduate stu- dents. Of Fairfield's 3,200 under- graduate students, 1,200 of them major in business. Only 75 miles away from Manhattan, the Dolan School attracts an impressive series of speakers, including Steve Forbes, Bear Sterns' CEO Alan Ace Greenberg, and New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg. At the same time, the school also provides an alternative to nearby metropolitan institutions, for executives who work in New York, but live in Connecticut and the surrounding region. The school also plans to enhance 64 groundwork for the school's next phase of growth, says its dean, Norman Solomon. In the next few years, the school will increase the size of its graduate programs, add more internships, establish more endowed faculty chairs, and expand its on- campus wireless network. The Dolan School serves 300 full- Clockwise from above: Steve Forbes speaking to students, Dean Norman Solomon; The Dolan School of Business; Fairfield University's pastoral campus, which offers an educational alternative to nearby metropolitan universities; Journalist Charlie Rose interviewing Bear Stearn CEO Alan Ace Greenberg at a recent campus event. three new exchange programs for its undergraduate international studies majors with Helsinki Business Polytechnic in Finland, the Institut de administration et de gestion University Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and the Institut de Formation Internationale in France. Although the Dolan School is its international presence. This year, Dolan faculty visited faculty at Russia's St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance (FINEC) to begin an informational exchange between the two schools. Dolan faculty will offer ideas FINEC faculty can use to replace largely lecture-oriented courses, while FINEC faculty will introduce new teaching techniques. The Dolan School also has created that are surely in store. "In today's world, we don't know what's going to happen. I became dean here in July 2001, and the 9/11 tragedy happened only a few days after class- es started," he says. "We had a num- ber of alumni who perished; and many people asked, 'How do we handle something like this?' But that year, an alum who works for the Bank of New York and was involved with bringing the bank back after the tragedy came to speak to our stu- dents. He gave a PowerPoint presen- tation that was riveting." Solomon continues, "L.L. Bean preparing for an exciting future, says Solomon, its biggest challenge lies in handling the unanticipated surprises BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2004 CEO Leon Gorman spoke to our students about last year's anthrax scare in the U.S., when the compa- ny's business plummeted because no one wanted to open its catalog. As horrific as 9/11 was, we must make it a learning experience for students to teach them what they can do in the face of tragedy and tough times. It's important for our students to hear that."■ z