Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Business School Numbers Among Best, Says Princeton Review

By Douglas Cunningham, The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.

Oct. 9–The School of Management at Marist College is one of the nation’s top business schools, The Princeton Review said in rankings out yesterday.

The Poughkeepsie school is featured in the 2008 edition of the Best 290 Business Schools, which is now in bookstores.

One former student, Nicholas Lombardi, said the ranking is deserved. He graduated in May with a bachelor’s of science in business administration, with a focus in entrepreneurship.

Lombardi recounted that in his sophomore year, he was thinking about leaving Marist. He walked into the School of Management, spoke to the dean and said he wanted to stay, but the course offerings didn’t fit what he wanted to do. The dean at the time told him a custom emphasis could be created.

“The school was able to work with me to accommodate me,” Lombardi said yesterday. He said he gained hands-on experience working with a local business on its marketing plan, among other assignments. Lombardi now works for a national facilities management company in Hartford, Conn., called IPT.

The School of Management has some 800 undergraduate students, and 200 to 250 in its graduate program, which in addition to business includes public administration. Elmore Alexander, dean at the school, noted that the school is fully accredited, that it has an online MBA program, and that it provides a small, liberal-arts college environment.

The schools in The Princeton Review guidebooks are not ranked academically, nor are they ranked by number in any single category.

Rather, the rankings are based on what students report about themselves and their career plans, as well as about each school’s academics and campus life.

Robert Franek, vice president and publisher, said this year’s business school rankings are based on some 19,000 responses from students at the 290 schools. He said current students’ views can be a great service in assessing how accessible and inspiring a particular school might be.

It’s the fourth year the School of Management has secured a ranking in the list. The region’s other full-scale business school, the SUNY New Paltz School of Business, was not included in the rankings.

Alexander said recent changes in coursework have involved the impact of technology across business disciplines, as well as a focus on ethics leadership. This week at the school, in fact, is “ethics week” to promote integrity in business. The inclusion of technology is a natural, given the presence of IBM, Alexander said.

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