Harvard MBA Receives $10m for Second Year Innovation: MBA News

Harvard Business School (HBS) has announced that it has received a US$10 million donation, with the intention of supporting the school's curriculum innovation efforts for the second year of its Harvard MBA program.

Donated by the family of the late William F Connell, who graduated from the Harvard MBA program in 1963 before becoming the founding chairman and CEO of Connell Limited Partnership, the donation will establish the Margot and William F Connell Family MBA Program Innovation Fund.

Re-imagining the Harvard MBA

Having re-imagined the first year of the Harvard MBA, which culminated in the launch in 2011 of a new three-module course titled FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development), HBS faculty are now engaged in designing a new approach to the second year of the program. Entirely elective based, the redesign on the second year of the Harvard MBA aims to offer students "an expanded array of learning opportunities, offering them more engagement in practice and promoting greater integration between the two years of the program," according to the school.

“We are very grateful for the generosity and support of Margot and the entire Connell family,” says Dean Nitin Nohria in a statement on HBS' website. “They are a remarkable success story, all of them eager to add value to the community and give back to society. Bill truly personified the mission of the School to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.

"A previous gift from the family in 2003 helped launch the school’s Leadership Initiative - now appropriately headquartered in Connell House - which has helped our faculty undertake research and course development in this field, which is at the center of all we do at HBS. This new donation from the Connells provides us with the financial support we need to enhance our second-year curriculum and make it a deeper, more cohesive, and more innovative experience that will have a life-long impact on our students.”