Freeman School of Business

A.B. Freeman School of Business

Type	Private
Established	1914
Parent institution	Tulane University
Endowment	$62 million [1]
Dean	Ira Solomon
Academic staff	124
Students	2695
Location	New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. 29°56′07″N 90°07′22″W / 29.935344°N 90.122687°W / 29.935344; -90.122687Coordinates: 29°56′07″N 90°07′22″W / 29.935344°N 90.122687°W / 29.935344; -90.122687
Campus	Urban
Website	freeman.tulane.edu

Freeman's graduate students' building (GW II) at dusk.

The Freeman School of Business, at Tulane University, is located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The school offers undergraduate programs, a full-time MBA program and other master's programs, doctoral programs, and many executive-education programs, and consistently ranks among the top business schools nationally and globally and was a charter member of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business in 1916.^[2]

The school is known in the finance community as the publisher of the Burkenroad Reports, and is regularly ranked among the top ten schools in finance by the Financial Times.^[3] Additionally, Entrepreneur Magazine consistently ranks the Freeman School among the top twenty schools for entrepreneurship; giving the school a ranking of No. 4 in 2009.^[4] The Financial Times's Global MBA Rankings 2010 ranked the Freeman School as the 35th best business school in the United States;^[5] the U.S. News & World Report ranked the MBA program 40th in 2011.^[6]

The school's main location, in the center of Tulane's Uptown New Orleans campus, is next to the Tulane University Law School and across a pedestrian thoroughfare (McAlister Place) from the university's student center. Every year, leading finance and M&A practitioners from throughout the United States come to Tulane to attend the Tulane Corporate Law Institute forum. The school was named in honor of Alfred B. Freeman, a former Coca-Cola Bottling Co. chairman and prominent New Orleans philanthropist.

History

In 1914, Tulane University's business school was founded as the "College of Commerce and Business Administration". Two years later, the school became one of the fourteen founding members of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the nation’s accrediting body for business schools. In 1940, the school began offering the Master of Business Administration program. The Doctor of Philosophy program began in 1976, and the Executive MBA program began in 1983. Three years later, the school moved from Norman Mayer Memorial Hall, one of the oldest buildings on Tulane's campus, to its present home, Goldring/Woldenberg Hall. Since then, a separate graduate-programs building was constructed, giving the school two main buildings along McAlister Place in the center of Tulane's Uptown New Orleans campus.

Programs

Degrees

The school offers a Bachelor of Science in Management degree, as well as numerous graduate degrees, including the following: Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Accounting, Master of Finance, Master of Management, Master of Risk Management, Doctor of Philosophy.^[7]

Joint-degree Programs

Joint-degree offerings include, but are not limited to, the MBA/JD (Law), MBA/MPH (Health Systems Management), MBA/MA (Latin American Studies), MBA/MD, MBA/BA, and Master of Accounting/BA.

Burkenroad Reports

Typical Burkenroad Reports cover

The Burkenroad Reports provide stock analyses of small- to mid-size companies throughout the Texas to Florida region of the United States. Many of these companies would otherwise not be covered by bulge bracket financial firms; consequently, the reports provide unique information that investors rely on, which helps the followed companies gain access to capital. Students are the primary authors of the reports, and they get the opportunity to visit the followed companies and interview top management. This process allows students to gain practical and marketable stock analysis skills, as well as insight into strategic management.^[8]

Global Leadership program

As part of their international-business concentration, all Freeman MBAs complete modules on conducting business in Latin America, Europe and Asia. Each module includes a trip to the region being reviewed, where classes are taught at local business schools and students get the opportunity to visit local businesses. Recent visits took place in Paris, Beijing, Mexico City, Monterrey, and Buenos Aires. Schools visited have included ITAM, Tsinghua University and EGADE.

Freeman Days

Within the United States, the Freeman School annually hosts company visits at corporate headquarters in New York City, Houston, and Washington, D.C. New Orleans employers typically come directly to the Uptown New Orleans campus. The school refers to these events as "Freeman Days." Past employer-participants have included Morgan Stanley, Google, Booz Allen, and Goldman Sachs.

Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship

The Levy-Rosenblum Institute seeks to provide entrepreneurial-minded students with opportunities to develop entrepreneurial skills inside and outside of the classroom. As such, the program connects students with entrepreneurial professors and full-time entrepreneurs in a wide-variety of fields. Donations from the Levy-Rosenblum Foundation and other charitable entities have resulted in a great number of monetary-award-winning opportunities for Freeman students with entrepreneurial ideas.^[9] Because of the Institute's resources—including the ability to offer $200,000 annually in merit-based scholarships and an annual business-plan competition with a prize of $50,000—Tulane consistently ranks among the top 20 universities for entrepreneurship by Entrepreneur Magazine.^[4]

Campus

The Freeman School maintains facilities in both New Orleans and Houston. Its two main buildings sit in the center of Tulane's Uptown New Orleans campus, which is located on St. Charles Avenue, across from Audubon Park.

Freeman Business School

Uptown New Orleans buildings

Construction on the Goldring/Woldenberg Business Complex expansion will be completed in 2018 with the rapid expansion of faculty, students and program offerings.^[10]

Goldring/Woldenberg Hall I (GW I) was completed in 1986. It primarily houses the undergraduate programs. Construction of Goldring/Woldenberg Hall II (GW II) was completed in November 2003. The building sits next to GW I and across the street from Tulane's Lavin-Bernick Center (LBC), a state-of-the-art student center completed in 2006. GW II houses the graduate business programs and a trading room.^[11]

Trading room

The Freeman School's trading room.

GW II also houses a trading room.^[11] The room has ninety-eight flat-screen computer monitors (two for each work space), televisions to provide news coverage, and a news ticker / stock ticker monitor that can be read from the nearby McAlister Place. All the desks have access to Bloomberg and Reuters financial databases. The trading room is meant to resemble spaces that can be found usually at banks and brokerage houses.

Investments

In late November 2008, the university announced that donors are funding elimination of the street (McAlister Drive) between the Uptown business school and the cafeteria/bookstore, to transform the center of campus "into a vibrant, pedestrian environment."^[12] Between 2003 and 2009, the Entergy Corporation donated $1 million to the Freeman School to develop the Tulane Energy Institute, a program aimed to stimulate energy-related instruction.^[13] In March 2009, the university announced the designation of a $1.5 million donation to support in perpetuity an MBA/JD professor of national stature at Tulane.^[14]

Current faculty

• Deen Kemsley, bulge-bracket accounting consultant^[15]
• Peter Ricchiuti, founder of Burkenroad Reports, former state chief investment officer^[16]
• Paul Spindt, former chair of the Federal Reserve System^[17]
• Scott Cowen, Tulane University president and economics professor^[18]

Alumni

• Ricardo Salinas Pliego, MBA 1979, Mexican businessman, CEO of Grupo Elektra, 154th wealthiest person in the world in 2008 (worth $6.3 billion)^[19]
• Regina Benjamin, MBA 1991, Surgeon General of the United States^[20]
• Andrew Friedman, BS (Finance) 1999, became General Manager of the Tampa Bay Rays at age 28^[21]
• Dominik Knoll, M.B.A., CEO of World Trade Center New Orleans
• John Runningen, MBA 1977, Managing Director, Runningen Associates, Atlanta; former Senior VP at WebMD^[22]
• John Koerner III, MBA/JD 1970, former President and Co-Owner of Barq's Root Beer Inc.^[23]
• Stanley E. Ellington Jr., MBA 1972, Managing Director, Dahlman Rose & Co.^[24]
• Jay Lapeyre, MBA/JD 1977, President of Laitram Corp.^[25]
• Nancy L. Shanik, MBA 1978, Managing Director, Alvarez & Marsal, New York^[26]
• Daniel L. Fink, MBA/MPH 1984, CEO of Riley Hospital for Children, the sixth-largest children's hospital in the United States^[27]
• Michael Barton, MBA 1985, KPMG partner (San Francisco)^[28]
• Christopher Callahan, BSM 2007, founder, nation's first Four-Year Triple Degree Program (JD/MBA/Tax LL.M) at the University of Miami ^[29]
• James Burke, MBA, CEO of TXU Energy^[30]
• Gerald Lema, MBA 1986, President, Baxter International, Inc., Asia Pacific region^[31]
• Keith Blackwell, MBA 1988, Founder & CEO of Bristol Technology Inc.^[32]
• Vijay Parmar, MBA 1988, founder, president and CEO of GainSpan Corp.^[33]
• Sagar Bhimavarapu, MBA 1992, Executive Director at JP Morgan Chase & Co. (New York)^[34]
• David Morris, MBA 1994, managing director of Oracle Capital Partners (Detroit); named one of the “Top 50 Under 50” by DiversityMBA Magazine^[35]
• Timothy W. Goodly, MBA 1995, Senior Vice President at CNN Worldwide^[33]
• Paul Friedman, MBA/JD 1996, Senior Vice President at Sony Pictures Entertainment^[25]
• Colleen E. Laduzinski, MBA/JD 2000, New York City partner of Jones Day^[36]
• Rod West, MBA 2005, President & CEO of Entergy New Orleans^[37]
• Jacky Wu, MBA 2005, EVP and Chief Financial Officer - Driven Brands Inc, Driven Brands (Charlotte, NC); named one of the “Top 100 Under 50” by DiversityMBA Magazine
• Kurt Modarelli, MBA, Managing Director-Head of Fixed Income, Legend Merchant Group, New York^[38]
• Marc Lauricella, MBA, Chief Marketing Officer, Praetorian Financial Group, New York^[39]
• John M. Porter, CFO, Astrotech, Houston^[40]
• Ford F. Graham, MBA/JD, Vice-Chairman and President, Miller Petroleum, Inc., and Managing Partner of Vulcan Partners^[41][42]

Rankings

Several news publications, including the Financial Times, Forbes, América Economía and the U.S. News & World Report, regularly rank the Freeman School among the top 50 business schools in the nation. Individually, the Finance department has been ranked among the top 10 in the world by the Financial Times on several occasions. Also, Entrepreneur Magazine has consistently ranked Freeman among the top 20 schools for entrepreneurship.^[4][43]

The Freeman School's Finance department was ranked 6th in the world by the Financial Times in 2005,^[44] and 10th in 2008.^[45]

U.S. News & World Report ranked the MBA program 40th in 2011.^[46]

Financial Times ranket the MBA program 35th in the U.S. in 2010 and 46th in 2008^[47]

Entrepreneur Magazine ranked the MBA program 4th in 2009,^[4] 17th in 2008, and 13th in 2006

AméricaEconomía magazine ranked the MBA program 24th in 2008 and 22nd in 2006^[48]

Fortune magazine's list of the Top 50 B-Schools for Getting Hired ranked the MBA program ranked 39th in February 2007^[49]

Forbes ranked the MBA program 44th in 2007;^[50] 52nd in 2009^[51]

Undergraduate business program ranked 43rd by U.S. News & World Report in September 2008.^[52] The Executive MBA program ranked 6th in Latin America by AméricaEconomía magazine in August 2006.

Tulane University’s Freeman School, which admitted in January that it submitted inflated data to U.S. News for five consecutive years, tumbled 24 places this year to a rank of 67th based on the now accurate information it gave to U.S. News for the ranking. The school had said it inflated average GMAT scores by an average 35 points for five straight years from 2007 through 2011. Freeman also conceded that it had falsely increased the number of completed applications it received by an average of 116 applications over the same time period. U.S. News tossed Tulane out of its ranking as a result of the admission, but the school was back in 2013.^[53]

In 2013, Tulane said the average GMAT score for its just enrolled class of full-time MBA students was 629–some 41 points below its reported number of 670 last year. The school’s acceptance rate ballooned to 82.9%, up from the reported 56.7% number last year. The average grade point average also showed a slight decline to 3.24, from 3.30 last year, and the percentage of graduates who had job offers by commencement plummeted to 54.9%, from a reported 78.8% a year earlier.^[54]

See also

• Burkenroad Reports
• List of business schools in the United States
• List of United States business school rankings
• Tulane Corporate Law Institute

References

External links

• Freeman School official website
• Tulane University official website