Olin Business School

“What goes down, must come up,” says Olin Business School’s Sam Chun. He will share tips on how businesses can prepare for economic recovery at the next “Thought Leadership Series” discussion in Kansas City, Mo.

Washington University in St. Louis has more than 12,000 students, 4,500-plus faculty and staff and only 5,168 parking spaces on its Danforth Campus.Students at the Olin Business School saw this problem as a real world business case and decided to tackle it head-on with a competition to inspire innovative solutions to the campus parking challenge with an emphasis on keeping it green. 

Before athletes grabbed the limelight at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, Olin MBA student Shaun Hudson found glory in hot wings at the “OLINpics” Feb. 11 in the Knight Center. The OLINpics continue at 5 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 18, at Brandt’s Cafe in the University City Loop with an Olympic trivia contest.

Marketing students at Olin Business School are gearing up for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games with a series of events to educate, entertain and raise funds for an adventure camp sponsored by Variety the Children’s Charity of St. Louis. The kick-off event for “OLINpics” begins at 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, in the Knight Center on the Danforth Campus. 

The Danforth Campus has more than 12,000 students, 4,500-plus faculty and staff and 5,168 parking spaces. Teams of Olin Business School students have been crunching the numbers since December in hopes of solving the campus parking challenge and winning the grand prize of $5,000 in the first Olin Sustainability Case Competition. Four teams compete in the final round Friday, Feb. 12. 

Winners of this year’s Olin Cup business competition got $75,000 to jump-start their ventures and create jobs. Ken Harrington, managing director of the Skandalaris Center at WUSTL, announced the winners Feb. 5 at the annual award ceremony in Graham Chapel.

Given ongoing agitation by a chorus of elected officials, the stage may be set for a major overhaul, if not outright abolishment of the nation’s largest home mortgage financing operations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Radhakrishan Gopalan, who teaches finance at Olin Business School, tells Smart Money that the private market should be able meet home financing needs, in most cases.

“High-quality research is the lifeblood of a great research university,” says Olin Business School Dean Mahendra Gupta.  It’s also how faculty create knowledge, inspire their students and transform business.  Abstracts and links to the lastest research from Olin’s faculty have just been published.

Dancing classrooms, online philanthropy, a resale shop, produce market and programs to empower youth are among the projects in the final round of this year’s social entrepreneurship competition.  The YouthBridge SEIC competition will award $155,000 in April to the business plans with the most promise and solutions to help resolve social issues. 

Entrepreneurs with business plans to make the world a better place will have 90 seconds to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges at 6 p.m. tonight in the next-to-final round of the annual YouthBridge SEIC (Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Competition) in May Auditorium, Simon Hall, on the Danforth Campus.