Stanford GSB: Stanford Business June 1997

Spreadsheet One The Big One That Got Away Do It, But Don't Expect to Do It All Top Teachers Named Lady Luck Is a Hard Worker *Pick Your Battles	Spreadsheet Two Good Fortune Beckons Executive Programs Challenge Change Soon to Be a Familiar Face Growth Key Topic in London	Spreadsheet Three It Pays to Set Standards Road to Bali Center Seeds Entrepreneurs Throwaway Computers Almost as good as being there Sorry, No Vacancy
A Closer Look: Eric Schumacher	A Closer Look: Ron Sandler	A Closer Look: John Scully
For The Record: The Class of '97

A Closer Look:John Scully , MBA 1968

As a new batch of MBA students enrolls this fall at the GSB, two kids with a special Business School tie are beginning their freshman year of college "across the street." They are graduates of Making Waves, a program created, funded, and shepherded by Mill Valley, Calif., investment manager John Scully that seeks to prepare inner-city youth for a way out of the 'hood.

Scully started making waves in 1989, when he en-listed 50 children from two fifth grades in Richmond, Calif., in an intensive extracurricular tutoring program that lasted through 12th grade. "Inner-city youth presents the greatest problem we face today," Scully says. "The private sector is best equipped to address it through its problem-solving skills, resources, time, and experience."

Scully's foundation hired "very bright, very motivated" students from nearby UC-Berkeley to be teachers, mentors, and role models for the Wave Makers. The youngsters promised to attend tutoring sessions three times a week (two unexcused absences in a quarter and they were out), and the foundation made a commitment to assist them with college costs--if they were admitted.

They were. Besides the two new Stanford students (two of only 607 who were accepted in the University's early decision program), 21 of Scully's 31 graduating Wave Makers were accepted to colleges that include the University of Michigan and all eight undergraduate campuses of the University of California.

"We've made mid-course corrections," says Scully of the program, which includes two more waves of 50 children, now in the fifth and seventh grades. First, he discovered that kids are more likely to stick with the program if their parents support them: Families are now included in the interviews. Second, he realized that it isn't necessary to financially support the children through college: Once they're accepted, scholarships will follow. This frees up the foundation to tutor more kids.

Scully shrugs off praise for his good works. "There are plenty of people of good will who are happy to fund a program like this," he says. "But the bottom line is: It takes people like GSB grads to organize it and then make it work."

BY JANET ZICH