As 2024 comes to a close, it’s a good chance to reflect on the exciting work and accomplishments that our Lerner College students, faculty, staff and alumni were able to achieve during the year. From student success to faculty accolades, here are our top Lerner moments of 2024:
Lerner Programs Continue to Be Ranked Among Nation’s Best
The Lerner Online MBA program was ranked No. 29 and the Online Master’s program in International Business placed 85th in the Online Business, non-MBA category in the 2024 U.S. News and World Report Best Online Programs ranking. The Online MBA program also was ranked No. 28 in the Princeton Review rankings and moved up five spots to No. 41 in the Poets&Quants 2025 rankings. Lerner also moved up seven places to No. 77 in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2024 Best Undergraduate Business Program rankings.
Additionally, Horn Entrepreneurship moved up four spots to No. 27 overall, and third in the Mid-Atlantic region, in the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine’s Top 50 list for 2025. Lerner was also ranked No. 45 on the Case Centre Impact Index rankings, and received the 2024 Inspiring Programs in Business Award from Insight Into Diversity magazine for the work of the Lerner Diversity Council.
Sundaram Helps Lerner Students Experience Impactful Study Abroad Programs
Suresh Sundaram, faculty director for study abroad semester and internship programs at UD, has developed multiple new study abroad programs over the past decade. He’s built the program with Global Academic Ventures, a 20-year UD study abroad partner. This year, he was named Faculty Director of the Year, an award presented annually by the Center for Global Programs and Services that honors a staff member who goes above and beyond planning and leading an exceptional study abroad program.
Kathryn Bender Develops Taylor Swift-Themed “Data Enchanted” Workshops
Assistant Professor of Economics Kathryn Bender developed a Taylor Swift-themed data visualization workshop series entitled “Data Enchanted: Transforming Numbers into Knowledge.” After running three workshops in fall of 2023, she ran the same three plus five more in this spring that were very popular and highly successful among students.
Delaware Governor John Carney Signs Women’s History Month Proclamation at UD
On March 25, Delaware Gov. John Carney visited the Women’s Hall of Fame Art Exhibition at the University of Delaware for a Women’s History Month proclamation signing. UD is hosting the exhibition, in collaboration with the Delaware Office of Women’s Advancement and Advocacy, in Lerner Hall. The exhibition, open from March 2024 to Jan. 15, 2025, displays 169 watercolor portraits by Delaware artist Theresa Walton that capture the essence of these influential women and their impact on the state. More than half of the women have connections to UD as alumnae, former faculty, staff, parents and friends.
Buddy Valastro Returns To UD For Cake Vending Machine Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
Buddy Valastro returned to campus on April 9 to speak with Blue Hen students and participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Carlo’s Bake Shop Cake Vending Machine in the Trabant Student Center. Valastro donated the machine to UD so it could be used to create experiential learning opportunities in data analytics for hospitality business management students in Lerner College.
Lerner Students Organize, Run Successful Events
Lerner’s Applied Sport Event Management class, with support from the Blue Hen Sport Management Club, held the first annual Blue Hen Sport Summit and Career Fair on April 25, featuring four panels followed by a job fair. Eight UD students in the Department of Hospitality and Sport Business Management program ran the inaugural Hospitality Heroes: Futures and Founders Celebration on April 30 at the Newark Courtyard Marriott. The event was dedicated to honoring graduating students and supporters of the hospitality program. Five Lerner students in the Event and Meeting Management Practicum ran Newark Live 2024 on December 3 featuring chef demos, a wine and cheese tasting, and raffles.
Lerner Celebrates Class of 2024
The Lerner College Class of 2023 showcased its achievements, experiences and memories as Blue Hens, and shared their post-graduation plans, in our Lifelong Lerner Series. Lerner College celebrated more than 1,130 graduates from the Class of 2023 including undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students during its Commencement ceremonies in May. Earlier in the month Lerner celebrated its outstanding students and their academic successes during the 2024 Honors and Achievements Day ceremony.
The Lerner College Alumni Board and Lerner College honored five individuals during its annual Alumni Awards of Excellence ceremony on May 31. Rudi Bless, Gail Colbert and Mark Fogel were given the Alumni Award of Excellence, Kristina Schaberg earned the Rising Star Award, and Jenni Fleck Jones was selected as the Brad Scott Excellence in Mentoring Award.
SWUFE-UD Institute of Data Science Honors First-Ever Graduating Class
On June 19, 166 students at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China, proudly became University of Delaware alumni during the inaugural 2024 SWUFE-UD Institute of Data Science graduation ceremony. These students are the first cohort to graduate from the joint institute which was formally launched during fall of 2020 after many years in the making. The program is administered at UD by the Lerner College.
Saviour Anyagri Establishes Organization to Provide Schooling for Students in Native Ghana
Lerner MBA student and former member of the UD men’s soccer team Saviour Anyagri established Saviour Organization to provide equitable educational opportunities for children in his native Ghana. The school, which opened in 2023, had grown to 53 students and two teachers by the summer of 2024.
Lerner Students Complete Impactful Summer Internships
This summer, operations management major Ebenezer Antwi completed his first of a two-year summer internship program run by the Institute for Responsible Citizenship call the Washington Program, with the goal of boosting young Black men and helping them make valuable connections in the government.
Additionally, nine Lerner students who completed summer internships were profiled in the My Summer Internship Series.
Larry Cunningham Named Director of UD’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance
UD announced the appointment of alumnus Lawrence “Larry” Cunningham as the new director of its John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance Cunningham assumed the role on September 23. Founded in 2000 within the Lerner College, the Weinberg Center is the only corporate governance center in Delaware and one of the longest-standing academic centers dedicated to corporate governance.
Lerner College Professors Receive Honors
Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and the Faculty Director of Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Stephanie Raible was named a top 50 best professor in undergrad business education by Poets&Quants. Vince DiFelice, a senior instructor of entrepreneurship and the faculty director of venture support, earned the 2024 Technical.ly Award for Educator of the Year in Delaware.
Wendy Smith, Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management at the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, received the 2024 Academy of Management Review (AMR) Decade Award at the Academy of Management Annual meeting on August 11.
During the meeting, Smith, who is co-founder of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at UD, also received the research journal Organization and Environment’s 2024 Best Paper Award for 3-year Impact. Additionally, she was named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate for the sixth consecutive year.
Associate Professor of Marketing Michal Herzenstein co-authored a paper that won the Weitz-Winer-O’Dell long term impact award from the Journal of Marketing Research.
Lerner College, Horn Entrepreneurship Receive Significant Gift
Horn Entrepreneurship recently received a transformational gift of $1.15 million from the Stanford family in support of the Summer Founders program. The Stanford Family Summer Founders Fund directly funds the stipends and expenses for program participants for the first five years, with the endowment then building to allow for that level of funding in perpetuity.