Wharton collaboration may help Morgan break down walls with Ivy schools.
Byline: Tim CurtisA Morgan State University collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School will provide Morgan students and faculty opportunities to learn and study with one of the country's top-ranked business schools. Andthe partnership could also help bring historically black colleges and universities into closer connection with Ivy League schools. The collaboration, announced Friday, will include opportunities for Morgan to participate in Wharton conferences and in Wharton research, opportunities that could make Morgan students more in-demand for Maryland businesses. Wharton thinks very highly of our business school here, said David Wilson, Morgan's president. They are very impressed with the quality of our students, the quality of our faculty and the (Maryland) business community has figured that out because they are hiring our students in record numbers. The formal collaboration came about after Wilson visited Wharton and Wharton Dean Geoff Garrett visited Morgan last fall. The collaboration is the first of its kind between Wharton and a historically black college. Through the partnership, Morgan State students and faculty will have access to great research opportunities, Wilson said. Already, several students participate in a summer undergraduate minority research program. Wilson hopes more students participate through the partnership. He also hopes to send some Morgan post-doctoral fellows to Wharton. As part of the collaboration, Morgan could also participate in some of Wharton's premier conferences. One is the school's annual conference on customer analytics, one of Wharton's top programs. The other conference is the Wharton Africa Business Forum, an annual global conference championing Africa as a business destination. Wilson envisions the collaboration as part of an effortto elevate Morgan State's Graves School of Business and Management, which recently opened a $79 million building. He is planning on commissioning a blue-ribbon panel made up of eight-to-CEOs from companies around the country to help develop a strategy to raise the school's profile. Now we can say to the world that we here at Morgan are open for business and we are serious, he said. The collaboration will also bring Morgan State's faculty in contact with the faculty at the Wharton School. Wilson hopes the partnershipwill result in some new thoughts and ideas that would not have been possible separately. As the Morgan faculty become more exposed to the Wharton faculty, I think there will be more epiphanies, more aha moments, he said. I think the faculty at Wharton will come to understand that (the Morgan faculty) are absolutely brilliant. ... A wall will come down. The collaboration with Wharton will also bring an opportunity to help that school learn more about diverse communities, Wilson said. How do we work with these institutions to basically say, If you are serious about being inclusive in the way in which you serve a population, then there is no better place to partner with to help you understand that then Morgan State University?' He believes that the collaboration between the two schools will help bring together more partnerships between the Ivy League schools and historically black schools. The Wharton collaboration follows a developing partnership with Dartmouth College and Wilson's lectures at Harvard, which he will continue this summer. One of the things that we are excited about here, is that we can raise our hands and say, 'Here's the way a true collaboration between (the Ivy League and HBCUs) should look like,' Wilson said.
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| Publication: | Daily Record (Baltimore, MD) |
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| Date: | Apr 23, 2018 |
| Words: | 563 |
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