Haas created the new diversity position as part of a school-wide Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Plan developed last year. The plan calls for increasing diversity among faculty, students and staff; attracting a more diverse applicant pool and involving alumni in diversity efforts. Abrams, who is credited with significantly enhancing the diversity of the Stanford undergraduate population as well as helping Stanford’s MBA program become the most ethnically diverse of the nation’s top business schools, will oversee execution of Haas’s diversity strategy throughout the student lifecycle, from recruiting to alumni engagement.

“The creation of this position underscores the priority we put on increasing diversity and inclusion here at Berkeley-Haas.” Haas Dean Richard Lyons said in a statement. “Diversity – and the varied experiences and viewpoints that come with it – drives richer, more innovative thinking. It’s an important ingredient for advancing our mission of developing leaders who redefine how we do business.”

For more on this story, click here.

For full-time MBA students, two new courses focused on the environment are now available, one examining the dynamics between corporate and government policies and another looking at the ethics and decision making involved in green product design at the personal and organizational levels.

The first, called Environmental Management and Policy, is a two-unit course taught by Professor David Vogel that will explore how corporations can both cause and address environmental problems and how public policy can play a role in or work against such efforts.

The second, a one-unit course taught by Associate Professor Christine Rosen, is called Ethics and Decision Making in Green Product Design. It will examine the social, political, legal and business issues raised as we become increasingly aware of the impacts of industry and products on human health and the environment.

Students in both the full-time MBA and evening & weekend MBA programs can also now choose a new leadership elective course. This highly interactive course, taught by Professor Jennifer Chatman, will include a series of live cases presented by executives from organizations including Gap, AT&T, the Oakland Raiders, Abbott Labs and Walmart.com.

Several additional unique new courses are also available to students in the evening & weekend MBA program and the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA programs. These range from a course looking at the risks of developing new products to a “Lean Launchpad” entrepreneurial course designed to give students a chance to build and launch a company in a single semester.

For more on Haas’s new spring courses, click here.

The CMO Insight Series, another speaker series for MBAs, will begin on February 8th with a talk by Richelle Parham, chief marketing officer of eBay. Students enrolled in this special course will then hear from CMOs from a wide range of companies, including Salesforce.com, Wells Fargo, Genentech and Clorox.

In addition, the Haas Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, the Haas Education Leadership Club and the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship each will sponsor business plan competitions drawing together students from top business schools around the globe to compete.

Spring at Haas will also include a range of student-run conferences, including the Latin American and Hispanic Business Association Business Conference and the Business of Health Care Conference in February and the Women in Leadership Conference, the Asia Business Conference and the Finance Conference in March.

For more details about the many events planned at Haas this spring, click here.

For starters, all 11 rooms dedicated for on-campus interviews are solidly booked for the first few weeks of spring, when top investment banks, consulting firms and other employers will come to campus. According to Feldman, it’s an indicator that could forecast another strong year for hiring for Haas grads despite high unemployment in the overall economy. Of the class of 2011, 91 percent accepted job offers within three months of graduation.

“2011 was a good year for MBA hiring,” Feldman says. “We know there is suffering on the overall employment landscape, but our MBA graduates are finding success in their job searches.”

The class went to work for an average annual salary of $114,232 in 2011, up from $107,451 in 2010. The median salary was $111,000, and signing bonuses averaged $22,344.

McKinsey & Company was the top employer for last year’s graduates, hiring 16 Haas students, twice the number hired the previous year. In total, 55 students went into consulting – or 27 percent of the class.

Tech firms drew even more of the Haas class, with 32 percent heading off to firms like Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Another 16 percent of the class took jobs in financial services with firms like Cambridge Associates and Citibank. The energy, healthcare and biotechnology sectors, meanwhile, each drew 7 percent of the class.

Feldman also reported that recruiting by global companies has increased this year. Companies including Chile’s LAN Airlines, Brazil’s Itau Unibanco and Chinese medical device firm Mindray have already been to campus for events and interviews.

For more details on Haas’s MBA Career Management Group, click here. For more on Haas’s 2011 job placement statistics, click here.

“As part of its BILD program (Berkeley Innovative Leader Development), Haas has implemented a series of on-campus events that offer students the opportunity to fine-tune their leadership skills outside of the classroom. The Berkeley MBA Leadership Development Series is comprised of a number of non-credit workshops and seminars, all of which allow students to gain further insight into three key areas of awareness: Self, Team and Organization.

“Each of these areas of competency has its own focus and set of goals. For instance, the Self competency track aims to help students identify and take advantage of their strengths (“Understand Yourself”), present themselves well through effective communication and proper business etiquette (“Presence and Polish”), build their brand and network (“Building Your Career”) and develop essential executive skills (“Executive Fundamentals”). Meanwhile, the Team competency focuses on “Managing People” and “Building Great Teams,” and the Organization workshops center on the themes of “Driving Change,” “Power and Influence” and “Organizational Leadership.” Each workshop and seminar in the series fits into one of these categories, and students can create their own sequence of events to attend based on their own goals and needs.”

For more information on leadership development opportunities at Haas, as well as in-depth curriculum information, be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guide to Berkeley / Haas. All Clear Admit School Guides are available for immediate purchase and download on the Clear Admit shop.

You could win a Clear Admit Guide!  Based on today’s post, we’ll be running a trivia contest on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us and play for your chance to win!

Lisa Feldman, MBA ‘95, will oversee employer relations and career advising for the school’s full-time, part-time and executive MBA programs and for MBA alumni. She is charged with exploring new ideas and practices in response to rapidly evolving student and employer needs while making sure the CMG continues its trajectory of excellence, Haas Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Chizuk said in a recent announcement.

Most recently the school’s director of recruiting, Feldman has worked in the Career Management Group since 2002. She is excited to take on this new, larger role.

“We will be building on student and alumni feedback about their career search needs and also on industry and technology trends to maintain and accelerate our momentum in the marketplace,” Feldman said in a statement. “I truly believe that we are responsible for launching the careers of the leaders of the future, and I’m proud to be part of that mission,” she added.

In case you’ve missed it, Clear Admit features a series of Q&As with career services directors at many of the leading MBA programs. These in-depth interviews give prospective applicants a valuable introduction to the individuals and teams leading career services efforts at their target schools, explaining how the recruiting process unfolds and what applicants can do before arriving on campus to best position themselves for the job searches they will conduct as MBAs. We’ll be enhancing this feature with additional interviews in coming months – including with Haas’s Lisa Feldman – so stay tuned!

The school hopes that hiring a new part-time diversity director will help facilitate execution of the Berkeley-Haas Equity, Inclusion, Diversity Plan, which was shared with the central UC Berkeley campus in July and upheld by the university as a best practice.

“Diversity and inclusion are important drivers of the Berkeley-Haas mission to develop leaders who redefine how we do business,” Haas Dean Rich Lyons said in a statement. “People looking at opportunities from very different angles strengthens our courses, programs and research, expanding the positive difference we can make in our world,” he continued.

Specific goals of the Haas diversity strategy include tracking faculty efforts to promote diversity through teaching and research, securing $500,000 in funds for diversity scholarships and initiatives, recruiting and retaining a diverse staff, analyzing Haas student satisfaction surveys to identify any differences according to gender or ethnicity and building awareness of the importance of equity, inclusion and diversity across the Haas community.

In addition to the search now underway for a director of diversity, Haas has devoted significant additional leadership toward the initiative. The existing equity, inclusion and diversity leadership team includes Senior Associate Dean and Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Chizuk, Associate Professor Rui de Figueiredo and Director of Human Resources Denise Boyd. Jo Mackness, Center for Responsible Business executive director, will continue to lead Haas’ diversity and inclusion efforts as an interim diversity director until a permanent director is named, and Susie Hanna-Jordan, an analyst in the dean’s suite, serves as the diversity project manager.

For more about Haas’ diversity strategy, click here.

“In all scoring categories used to determine the ranking, business schools have raised the bar,” Judith Samuelson, executive director of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, which conducted Beyond Grey Pinstripes, said in a statement. She noted that there are more courses than ever before featuring content on social, ethical and environmental issues, more courses about the role of business as a positive agent for change and more research published by faculty on relevant topics. 

Stanford GSB slipped to fourth place in the last Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking in 2009, having held the top spot in 2005 and 2007. But the Palo Alto school rose to the top again this year as a result of having numerous course offerings with social and environmental content, additional courses that explicitly address the role of mainstream business in improving social and environmental conditions and an environment in which faculty feel free to explore social and environmental topics in their research.

The top 10 schools in this year’s ranking were as follow:

1. Stanford Graduate School of Business 2. York University, Schulich School of Business (Canada) 3. IE University (Spain) 4. Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business           5. Yale School of Management 6. Northwestern, Kellogg School of Management      7. University of Michigan, Ross School of Business 8. Cornell University, Johnson Graduate School of Management 9. University of North Carolina, Kenan-Flagler Business School 10. UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business

In a press release announcing the rankings, Samuelson noted that the 2011 survey represented the first opportunity since the global economic downturn to measure whether and how MBA programs have changed their course content as a result. “In the wake of the financial crisis we’re seeing an increased willingness to address these issues,” she said. “That willingness is coming from a variety of factors, including student demand, faculty readiness and a desire on the part of business schools to clarify what exactly they’re doing to prepare business leaders to serve the needs of society, such as job creation and energy conservation.”

To be considered as part of the rankings, business schools were asked to submit detailed course descriptions and faculty research abstracts, as well as information about extracurricular activities, institutes and centers, joint degrees and specializations. For the 2011-2012 Beyond Grey Pinstripes rankings, 149 schools from 22 countries submitted data. The Aspen Institute project team spent seven months analyzing the data to arrive at the rankings.

For the complete 2011 Beyond Grey Pinstripes rankings, click here.

In his session, Richmond will focus on how prospective applicants should develop an appropriate list of target MBA programs as they begin their application process. The session will help participants sort through the avalanche of information they receive about the “best” business schools – from rankings and books to forums and Facebook – to determine which programs are really best suited to them.

Richmond’s presentation will take place on Monday, September 19th, from 4 to 5 p.m. EST. As with the entire GMATCH Virtual MBA Fair, Richmond’s presentation is free to student participants who complete a simple online registration form. To register, click here.

Other scheduled events in the GMATCH line-up include a range of panel discussions featuring admissions staff, alumni and current students addressing topics such as the value of an MBA, top mistakes applicants make and business schools in Asia.

There also will be a special session devoted to the GMAT exam, in which Eric Chambers of the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which owns the GMAT exam, will help explain to prospective applicants what the test does and doesn’t measure and what it tells schools about you. Chambers will unpack some common GMAT myths and offer advice on how students can prepare to do their best on test day.

In addition to these events, more than 60 business schools will have virtual booths as part of the online fair, providing prospective applicants with an opportunity to interact face to face with admissions representatives via webcam. Participating schools include the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, London Business School, UCLA Anderson School of Management, UVA’s Darden School of Business, Indian School of Business, Nanyang Business School and many more.

The full-time MBA program features four new electives focusing on sustainability, fixed income, brand management and social media marketing respectively. The first, called “Driving Sustainability through Business,” is designed to prepare students to make sustainability a part of their career in any position or role. It will be taught by Executive-in-Residence Tony Kingsbury of Dow Chemical, who leads the Haas Sustainable Products and Solutions Program.

The second, “Fixed Income,” will cover the basics of security types, debt markets and the mathematics of yield curves. Randy Wedding, senior managing director of fixed incomes in the UC Regents Office of the Treasurer, will teach this new course. 

The third new full-time MBA course this fall is called “Brand Manager Bootcamp,” and it give students hands-on immersion in the challenges faced by brand managers from entry-level to senior positions. Instructor Bill Pearce, who until August served as chief marketing officer for Taco Bell and Del Monte Foods, will bring real-world experience to the classroom.

Finally, a fourth new course entitled “Social Media Marketing,” taught by Assistant Professor Zsolt Katona, will examine the opportunities and challenges of social networks, social media platforms and online advertising. It will feature a computer simulation that lets student teams see what it’s like to run an actual marketing department and formulate and implement its social media strategy. “Professor Katona’s course is very timely and addresses current business and social needs, as social networks and social media platforms are ubiquitous in our lives,” Full-time MBA Executive Director Julia Min Hwang said in a statement.

For more details on these new courses as well as new offerings for executive MBA students, evening and weekend MBA students and undergraduate students at Haas, click here.