Efforts to attract more black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority students to Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management are paying off. Not only are admission numbers up, but media citations, awards and other forms of recognition are rolling in.

On Oct. 1 the Johnson School received the Brillante Award from the National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA) for its efforts to recruit Hispanic-American students to its MBA program. Deniqua Crichlow, director of the school's Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and L. Joseph Thomas, associate dean for academic affairs, flew to Anaheim, Calif., to accept the award, which recognizes people and organizations that "foster leadership through graduate management education and professional development in order to improve society." NSHMBA, which has 7,000 members, is considered the premier Hispanic organization of its kind in the United States.

Provided by the Johnson School

Deniqua Crichlow and Joe Thomas receive the Brillante award Oct. 1 in Anaheim, Calif., on behalf of the Johnson Graduate School of Management, which was recognized by the National Society of Hispanic MBAs for its efforts to involve Hispanic students in its MBA program.

Said Crichlow at the Anaheim ceremony, "We work closely with all groups and individuals to carry the message of the value of diversity in corporations around the world. The award is a wonderful recognition of those efforts."

In 1999 the Johnson School sought to diversify its students and better prepare them to work in a globally diverse environment by establishing a special office to accelerate those goals. Now called the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the office was the first of its kind at a leading U.S. business school. "We believe it is a model for diversifying the MBA student population as a whole," said Crichlow.

Among the tools employed by the office is participation in Leadership Education and Development (LEAD), a national program that reaches out to minorities who are high school juniors and selects the best achievers, based on their test scores and grades. During the program, they attend classes taught by business school professors and end their three-week session by giving presentations on the stock market and real business marketing cases. Cornell hosted 30 LEAD students last year. Twelve of them, plus an additional seven who had visited other campuses, entered as freshmen this fall, said Crichlow. One of the program's goals is to get more minorities in the pipeline for MBA and other graduate programs.

Minority students who enroll at the Johnson School rate it highly. MBA student Michelle Wonsley was quoted in the "2006 Wall Street Journal Guide to the Top Business Schools," speaking about her excitement at being admitted to the school on a full-tuition scholarship and studying for a career in human resources. The guide noted that Wonsley was able to boost her Graduate Management Admission Test scores by 170 points and fine-tune her interview skills with help from Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), another national program the Johnson School partners with, which seeks to prepare high-potential minorities with undergraduate degrees to apply to top business schools.

This Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Oct. 27-29, the school will host 38 prospective students through its Johnson Means Business program, which gives interested applicants who are members of minority groups an opportunity to find out more about the school firsthand and meet current students, faculty and alumni.

And last weekend, the Johnson School student group HABLA (Hispanic American Business Leaders Association) hosted the HABLA MBA Case Competition for the second year in a row. Six teams from top U.S. business schools came to campus to analyze a business case oriented toward the Hispanic-American marketplace. They were judged by a panel of seasoned executives with experience in that marketplace. A team from the University of Michigan business school bested teams from the Johnson School and business schools at Columbia, New York University (Stern) and the Universities of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) and Pennsylvania (Wharton), to take home a first-place prize of $6,000. The NYU team placed second, winning $3,000.

Part of the program was a keynote speech Oct. 22 in the Statler Hotel's Taylor Room by one of Cornell's highest-ranking alumnae in business, Irene Rosenfeld '75, M.S. '77, Ph.D. '80, who is now chair and CEO of international snack-making firm Frito Lay, a division of PepsiCo, the event's key sponsor. Procter & Gamble also co-sponsored the competition.