This Friday, the Darden School of Business and the Batten Institute will unveil the new innovation laboratory, or i.Lab, which the school calls a state-of-the-art learning environment meant to inspire a new approach to teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

New York Times bestselling-author Daniel Pink, who has written extensively about the rise of right-brain thinkers, will speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The event takes place from 1-3 p.m. EST and will be video streamed live at www.darden.virginia.edu/iLab and available online 60-days after the event.

Elizabeth O’Halloran, managing director of the Batten Institute, says that “In these challenging economic times, the i.Lab makes possible an effectual, multi-disciplinary approach to entrepreneurship and innovation, providing students a powerful and relevant skill set to succeed and excel in today’s global marketplace.”

Darden also recently announced the launch of new Global Business Experiences–one-to-two week courses that take place in countries around the world each spring. The programs highlight how to do business in each country and introduce students to both cultural and business protocol through classes at partner schools, company visits and meetings with prominent political and business leaders.

This year, first and second-year Darden students will travel at mid-term break to Argentina, Bahrain, Brazil, India, Mexico, Spain and Sweden, and – for the first time – to Egypt and then to Israel in May.

Professor Gal Raz, who teaches operations and supply chain management at Darden, says this GBE is unique in its focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in Israel; students will  work on an actual project to develop a business plan to bring a product to the U.S. market.

For more on the GBE program, the video below shows interviews with three participants from the MBA class of 2009 explaining why they took advantage of this internationally focused program at Darden.

More women than ever are considering pursuing an MBA, which has led to some unexpected pipeline trends revealed by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) in this month’s Graduate Management News.

GMAC has reported that the number of GMAT tests taken by women surpassed 100,000 for the first time ever last year. Exams taken by women in the testing year ending June 30, 2009 represented 39.5% of all exams taken, a figure that has changed only one percentage point in 10 years.

However, Lamia Walker, GMAC regional director for Europe, Middle East and Asia,  points out some major shifts by region, age, and career intent. “When we break down gender distribution by regional citizenship, we find a wide range – from 56.1 percent of exams in Eastern Europe to just 24.6 percent in Central Asia,” she says.

(source: Graduate Management Admission Council)

Key findings from the 2010 mba.com Registrants Survey Report indicate that:

Schools need to recruit women sooner. The average woman first considers business school less than two years after finishing her undergraduate degree, almost nine months earlier than the average man. Women also sit for the GMAT exam sooner than men and submit their first business school application more rapidly than male counterparts.

Women typically submit fewer applications. Female applicants considering full-time MBA programs submitted an average of 2.4 applications, compared with 3.0 for men. Women in Central Asia and in Asia Pacific submitted the greatest number of applications on average, 3.7 and 3.3 respectively.

Don’t write off the female quants. Female prospective students are more likely than men to consider MA/MS in Accounting programs, and the average number of submitted applications reported by women to any graduate management education program type is highest among those applying to MA/MS Finance programs (3.2 applications on average in 2009).

The survey report found numerous differences between men and women when it comes to preferred study location, financing plans, information sources, business school preferences and employment outcome, as well as significant differences by gender in the skills that prospective students hope to improve in business school.

Armed with this information, MBA programs should be able to more effectively outreach to talented female applicants.

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.”

* * * * *

If you are feeling stumped by your application essays and need some additional guidance, check out our NEW series of essay guides for MBA applications. Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Stanford and Wharton available now. They are seriously terrific and we are proud to say that almost every person who has ordered one has come back for more!

We are on Facebook – join the Stacy Blackman Consulting group, or become a friend of Stacy Blackman.

I am on Twitter too…click to follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/stacyblackman

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.

* * * * *

If you are feeling stumped by your application essays and need some additional guidance, check out our NEW series of essay guides for MBA applications. Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Stanford and Wharton available now. They are seriously terrific and we are proud to say that almost every person who has ordered one has come back for more!

We are on Facebook – join the Stacy Blackman Consulting group, or become a friend of Stacy Blackman.

I am on Twitter too…click to follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/stacyblackman