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The GSB and The Stanford Challenge

 

The GSB's Vital Role

Make a Gift NowMankind faces extraordinary challenges, including declining resources, political strife, and dangerous diseases. As a great university that combines the search for knowledge and the education of the next generation of leaders, Stanford is singularly qualified to confront these problems. The engine that will drive our efforts is The Stanford Challenge, a five-year, $4.3 billion campaign organized around three important themes:

Seeking Solutions

The Stanford Challenge addresses three multidisciplinary initiative topics: international peace and security; environmental sustainability; and human health.

Students and faculty from the University's seven schools and from a variety of disciplines aim to deepen the understanding of problems and to create new and effective solutions. Faculty from the Graduate School of Business play a central role in helping create solutions.

Key multidisciplinary institutes and programs involving Business School faculty include: the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Advisory Council on Interdisciplinary Biosciences.

Educating Leaders

The Stanford Graduate School of Business is central to the University's ambition to educate great leaders. Using the management acumen provided by GSB faculty, Stanford's multidisciplinary approach will deliver better solutions to address these societal challenges.

The Graduate School of Business is actively preparing the next generation of organizational leaders through the following:

  • Bass Seminars—small-group, project-based seminar courses that challenge students to delve in-depth into topics—may include graduate students from other parts of Stanford, and
  • Our four centers in entrepreneurship, social innovation, global business and the economy, and leadership foster cross-disciplinary, cross-functional skills in general management.

Programs offered for students outside of the Business School include:

  • The Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship—a four-week program for graduate students from non-business disciplines, and
  • Executive programs such as the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders and the Freeman Spogli Institute's Program for Summer Fellows on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Sustaining a Foundation of Excellence

Along with innovative new research and teaching, we must sustain and improve our core disciplines. We must recruit, retain, and support a world-class faculty, while attracting the best students we can through need-blind admissions and financial aid. Annual giving to the school allows us to keep the core strong, as well as respond flexibly to opportunities and challenges.

Our Vital Role

We rely on the commitment and dedication of all who believe in Stanford's obligation to create a better world. Students and faculty members have a vital role to play, along with alumni and friends, whose generosity and support are essential for us as we seek to change lives, organizations, and the world.