The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business will receive $1.5 million from the BB&T Foundation to support business ethics and leadership programs, the school announced today.

Awarded over a 10-year period, the gift will fund new curriculum and the BB&T Colloquium on Capitalism, Ethics and Leadership lecture series at the Smith School’s new Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change, which will launch in the fall of 2010.

This center will focus on fostering synergies among research, education and practice to generate new knowledge about leadership, innovation and effective change in organizations. To meet these goals, the BB&T Colloquium on Capitalism, Ethics and Leadership will bring together students, faculty, staff, alumni and the public for a spring lecture series.

According to a statement, the center will also use the BB&T gift to create undergraduate, MBA and executive education curriculum that will focus on the logic and morality of capitalism.

Smith School dean G. “Anand” Anandalingam expressed his gratitude for the support, saying that “Since the unraveling of the nation’s financial system, we’ve really come to recognize the need for better leadership education for current and future business leaders. This generation needs to understand the origins of our capitalist system from a historical and moral context in order to make good decisions that take all stakeholders into account.”

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The number of European citizens taking the GMAT is on the rise, and these individuals are sending their scores to management education programs in Europe–not America–according to an analysis of GMAT testing trends released Wednesday by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

In fact, non-U.S. citizens accounted for more than half of all exams taken worldwide during testing year 2009–the first time this has happened since the GMAT’s creation more than 50 years ago.

“Earning a business school degree provides a critical edge in today’s complex and challenging economy, and more and more Europeans are recognizing that high-quality management education is available in their own back yard,” says Julia Tyler, executive vice president of member services and school marketing for GMAC.

Researchers attribute the surge in popularity to an increasing interest in such schools by Europeans themselves, who are sending a significantly smaller share of their GMAT scores to the United States and more score reports to programs in Europe.

So, to which programs are Europeans applying? The most popular MBA programs for testing year 2009 were at INSEAD, London Business School and IESE Business School.

This data reflects the fast-rising interest in MBA and other graduate management education programs around the world in recent years. More details about GMAT testing and score-sending trends among European citizens are in GMAC’s latest European Geographic Trend Report for GMAT Examinees, available online at www.gmac.com/geographictrends.

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The B-school application process is in the midst of a transformation of sorts, with earlier deadlines, a growing number of programs accepting the GRE,  and the introduction of audio and video components that help AdCom get a better feel for the person behind the paper.

Francesca Di Meglio’s reporting of this revamp Monday in BusinessWeek singled out University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the UCLA Anderson School of Management as the leaders in creating innovative MBA applications.

The PowerPoint presentation, used at Booth for the past few cycles, has enabled applicants to show another side of themselves and demonstrate how they navigate ambiguity through various frameworks and strategies. However, admissions may eliminate such presentations starting with applications for the 2010-2011 academic year.

Rose Martinelli, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at Booth, told BusinessWeek the PowerPoint slides became rote and entirely too easy to predict. They didn’t showcase the applicant’s personality and help the admissions committee determine who is and isn’t a good fit, she explained.

Today, on her blog The Rose Report, Martinelli further clarified the issue. The admissions committee is in the process of thinking through each of the different application components, and this may be the end of the presentation requirement in its current form, she explains. No final decisions about next year’s application have been made, however.

“Again, our focus is not on creating a clever or ‘gimmicky’ application, but one that provides candidates the opportunity to convey the most relevant information that helps us to assess fit  in our selection process,” Martinelli writes.

Despite it all, she says the PowerPoint presentation has been an incredibly successful part of identifying students who are a great fit for Booth. Stay tuned to see how the program will use innovation to capture an applicant’s essence in next year’s application.

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Earlier this week, a piece in the New York Times reported that the job market seems to be stabilizing for business school students. “There’s reason for students to be optimistic,” says Tracy Handler, a spokeswoman for the MBA Career Services Council, an association of business school career advisers.

“Any signs of recovery are modest. But business schools are looking ahead and seeing a light at the end of what is now a pretty short tunnel.”

Business students everywhere are finding banking jobs and internships; the number of banks interviewing at Darden School of Business this year increased 20%, and the number of job offers so far has risen 33%, the school tells the Times. At the Duke Fuqua School of Business, meanwhile, the career office reported last month that the number of students with investment banking internships had doubled compared with last year.

“Ironically, this can be a superb time to enter banking,” Jeff Fischer, the director of career management at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, tells the Times. “The MBA population is like the end of a whip. When cycles swing up and down, students are the ones who swing up and down the most in terms of employment.”

It may be premature to predict hiring results, since job offers continue throughout the spring, but the general mood about banking jobs is quite optimistic. Wall Street’s bad rap is slowly fading away, becoming a dream destination for B-school students once more.

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