Brandeis International Business School

Dear Brandeis International Business School Community,

The Fall 2021 semester is underway and students, faculty and staff are excited to be back on campus. 

The International Business School is pleased to welcome 270 incoming graduate students this fall. Our student body now represents over 40 countries, reflecting the fact that we are rigorous, experiential and global. Our undergraduate major continues to be a large and popular program. The students appear relaxed and happy, and teaching is going well.

The key to this semester will be flexibility. Our professors and students are adapting well to hybrid learning — most students are in class, with some attending virtually. Not all of our students have been able to travel to campus in time for the start of the semester, while about 40 students have chosen to study online due to travel difficulties and other reasons.

As you can see on the Brandeis COVID-19 Dashboard, high vaccination rates among our active on-campus population combined with strict testing and masking policies have allowed Brandeis University to safely return to in-person learning. We will continue to monitor the pandemic closely and are committed to keeping our community safe. We are grateful to Brandeis students, who are considerate and conscientious.

We have one new full-time faculty member joining us this year. Senior Lecturer Erin Vicente will teach our Business Communication course for undergraduate business majors and advise on our communications requirements for graduate students. We would also like to welcome back Jean-Claude Makolo, MA’10, MS’14, PhD’16 as an adjunct professor of finance. We are pleased to announce that Anna Scherbina will serve as our new director of the Master of Arts in International Economics and Finance (MA) and that former MA director George Hall will serve as director of the PhD program. We thank Nidhiya Menon for her service as PhD director for the past three years.

Our continued success at the International Business School would not be possible without the generosity of our alumni and friends, who give back in so many ways. Thank you for keeping our students in mind for your hiring needs. To help ensure that our success is reflected in our rankings, we kindly ask that you fill out any alumni and employer surveys that come your way. As ever, financial donations to any area that matters to you are always appreciated.

We invite you to our first virtual event of the year, The Origins and Evolution of FinTech: A Conversation with Mitch Caplan ’79, former CEO of E*TRADE Financial, to be held at 12 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 24. Thank you for all that you do in support of Brandeis International Business School, and I wish you a successful fall!

Sincerely,Kathryn Graddy
Dean, Brandeis International Business School
Fred and Rita Richman Distinguished Professor in Economics