Troy, N.Y. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lally School of Management & Technology is number one in the nation in the area of corporate strategy, according to BusinessWeek. 

As a companion to the magazine’s 2008 rankings of undergraduate business programs, staffers asked nearly 80,000 business majors at 127 schools to rank their programs on a scale of one to five in different academic categories. BusinessWeek ranked the schools in a range of academic fields, including microeconomics, accounting, financial management, business law, corporate strategy, and ethics. The Lally School, along with Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, were recognized among the top 10 in both calculus and quantitative skills.

“The Lally School is proud to have our corporate strategy curriculum ranked first among all undergraduate business schools in the United States. This is a remarkable achievement, as it places us on a key dimension of performance ahead of other elite programs, such as Wharton, MIT, and Berkeley,” said David Gautschi, dean of the Lally School.

“Our rankings in the specialty areas of corporate strategy and quantitative methods are not flukes. Rensselaer students have uniformly strong math aptitudes, and our curriculum is rigorous and creative,” added Gautschi. “Strategy is integrated into the curriculum from the first course, Introduction to Management, to the capstone. We have consciously built the curriculum to help strong analytical minds also engage in synthesis throughout the undergraduate experience.” 

BusinessWeek ranked the Lally School 26th overall in the nation among the magazine’s 2008 list of top 50 undergraduate business programs. The ranking puts the Lally School among  the top five in the Northeast and 19th on the list of private institutions offering students the biggest return on their investments.  Last year, the Lally School was one of nine new schools to be named to BusinessWeek’s list, making its debut at number 40. 

“The re-energized Lally School is a solid contributor to The Rensselaer Plan, a comprehensive action plan to transform the oldest technological university in the U.S. into a pre-eminent technological research university with global reach and global impact,” Gautshi said. This year the Lally school launched new options in the undergraduate curriculum relating to advanced study of technology commercialization and entrepreneurship, financial modeling, and risk analytics. 

“These new options are not only distinctive, they prepare the Rensselaer undergraduate for the full-time Lally MBA program with the built-in opportunity for an extended internship in a domestic or international work setting with one of the school’s industry partners. Our new financial innovation track anticipated the need for graduates to respond to the rapidly emerging crisis in capital and financial services markets worldwide, as students following this track are prepared for positions in risk analysis and management in central banks and corporations, as well as in financial and investment analysis jobs on Wall Street,” Gautschi said. 

More than 370 undergraduate students are enrolled in the Lally School. Students in the undergraduate program study finance, marketing, human behavior, information technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, operations management, and organizational analysis and development. Students also are encouraged to take courses from Rensselaer’s other schools in areas of cognitive science, humanities and social sciences, architecture, and computer science. In addition, a quarter of Lally School students who qualify study overseas at some point during their undergraduate program.

Gautschi noted that participation in such courses provides students with a strong background in analytical reasoning, interpersonal skills, and an understanding of how to use technology to their competitive advantage when making business decisions. Students also understand and learn the importance of social responsibility, and how to seek out the ethical and social implications of their business. 

 “The academic rank and the ranking our students give the program signals to us that we have not only improved, we have excelled at what we do,” Gautschi said. “We continue to expand increasingly close ties with industry partners in the United States and abroad, and by continuing to develop innovative new programs to attract aspiring students who are eager to take the ‘Rensselaer Challenge’ by making a positive contribution to global society. We also have made a commitment to revitalizing the local economy of the Capital Region of New York state, by taking steps to work with business leaders, nonprofit organizations, state government agencies,, and educators to enable and inspire enterprise and economic development.”

 “Changing times demand a new way to prepare business leaders of the future,” Gautschi said. “The Lally School is relatively small with a collegial faculty and students who expect and create change. This mind-set creates an environment that fosters innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, and the faculty and students are working shoulder to shoulder to advance thought and practice in areas technology and financial innovation with global reach and global impact.”  

To view the complete list of the 2008 BusinessWeek specialty rankings, go to: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/bschools/undergraduate/08rankings/specialty.asp 

To view the 2008 BusinessWeek undergraduate rankings, go to: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/  

About Rensselaer’s Lally School
Rensselaer’s Lally School of Management & Technology was founded in 1963 as an integral part of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation’s oldest degree-granting technological university. Building on Rensselaer’s heritage of more than 175 years of leadership in science and engineering, the Lally School is dedicated to advancing business through innovation. The Lally School’s curriculum is designed to produce leaders who combine creative passion with the ability to integrate technology across business functions. The faculty emphasizes the value of hands-on experience available through campus resources such as the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship and the nation’s first on-campus business incubator. Rensselaer’s Lally School offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in management, doctoral programs in management and technology, an Executive MBA program, and an expanding portfolio of collaborative programs with enterprises and academic institutions in the Indian sub-continent, China, Europe, and the Middle East.. For more information on the Lally School, go to www.lallyschool.rpi.edu.