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JulyAugust2007

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Headlines After the Tragedy Following the April tragedy on the Virigina Tech campus in Blacksburg, an out- pouring of sympathy and grief has eased staff and students back into academic life. Richard E. Sorensen, On a more personal level, he notes, "I think I received e-mail from everyone I served with on an accreditation committee for the past five years. I was overwhelmed by the generosity." In the April massacre, thirty- two students and fac- ulty lost their lives to a gunman who then killed himself. While no business school students were killed in the shootings, one was injured; and account- ing professor C. Bryan Cloyd lost his daugh- ter, Austin, an interna- tional studies student. The Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund has been established to help pay for victims' assis- tance, grief counseling, memorials, and other expenses. Donors may also contribute to the Hokie Spirit Scholar- ship Fund or to funds in the name of each of the victims. The board of AACSB International has voted to donate $10,000 to the Spirit Fund and an additional $10,000 to the College Virgina Tech students mourn at a makeshift memorial on the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus. dean of the Pamplin College of Business, has expressed his gratitude to schools from all over the world that have shown solidarity with Virginia Tech. Some schools held services; some invited their own stu- dents to sign petitions and banners; some collected money to donate to special funds and scholarships. 8 BizEd JULY/AUGUST 2007 of Engineering Scholarship Fund. Information about the victims, the funds, and the responses of other schools can be found at www.vt.edu /remember. In the wake of the shootings, says Sorensen, the business school is considering ways to make its own building more secure. At the univer- sity level, the school is investigating ways to improve physical security as well as ways to send text messages directly to students' cell phones to make communication instantaneous. Sorensen believes that, to weather any kind of crisis, a school needs a strong management team in place to help the community handle the media, deal with grief, and maintain a sense of purpose. "The most important part is devel- oping an administrative team that works together and has confidence in each other, so that when things like this happen you can gear up to do things that you would never have imagined you would do," he says. Sorensen, a 25-year veteran of Virginia Tech, says other key admin- istrators at the school have worked together long enough to "develop collaborative and close interpersonal relationships that allowed us to work together when the unthink- able was happening." Choosing an EMBA Program When working adults are selecting an execu- tive MBA program to attend, the top five factors they consider are quality of the faculty, reputation of the school, program format, quality of classmates, and location, accord- Resources Students Consult Admissions process Information session Campus visit Alumni Program Web site Current student Program brochure Virtual information session Program CD-ROM 8.00 7.97 6.30 7.37 7.07 7.02 6.30 5.25 3.89 All factors rated on a ten-point scale. CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

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