Babcock School finalist for 2008 TeamMBA Award

Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management is a finalist for the 2008 TeamMBA Award for Outstanding Community Service from the Graduate Management Admission Council.

Babcock was selected for Project Nicaragua. The finalists were chosen on the scope, impact and innovativeness of their projects.

Kay Keck, chair of the TeamMBA Award Selection Committee, said the committee was impressed with the number and diversity of ways that MBA students are serving their communities and beyond. “It made me very proud to see the positive impact our students are having in the world,” she wrote in the letter announcing Wake Forest as one of four finalists out of 23 entries.

Chris Yuko, a student co-founder of Project Nicaragua, attended a finalists’ luncheon in Chicago last month. “I’m proud of our program and the way it had our students thinking and applying our business school education to educate others to help themselves and thus focusing on sustainability,” Yuko said. “I am further convinced that in the area of social development and community service, Babcock’s Project Nicaragua stands alone.”

Project Nicaragua is an MBA student-led initiative founded in fall 2006 by four full-time students. Yuko spent several post undergraduate years working with and developing non-profits in Nicaragua. A few weeks into his MBA experience, Yuko began linking the business concepts he was learning in the classroom and the vital need for formal business skills among rising business owners in Nicaragua who didn’t have access to business education or training.

Christopher Burch, another co-founder, helped develop Project Nicaragua’s business seminar. The two-day seminar presented by Babcock MBAs has become the lifeblood of the project, which was expanded this summer to Benin, Africa.

The Graduate Management Admission Council is the association of leading graduate business schools around the world. GMAC meets the needs of business schools and students through a wide array of products, services and programs and serves as a primary resource of research and information about quality graduate management education.