New Georgia Encyclopedia: Roberto C. Goizueta Business School

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Roberto C. Goizueta Business School

The Roberto C. Goizueta Business School at Emory University is known

Goizueta Business School

for its melding of academic and real-world perspectives and its emphasis on communication skills. The school, which offers undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D programs, trains approximately 500 undergraduate students and more than 600 graduate students in MBA (master of business adminstration) and Ph.D. curricula. MBA programs are offered for day and evening students and executives; an accelerated one-year MBA program is also available.

The school is named for the former Coca-Cola chairman and chief executive officer Roberto Goizueta. In 2004 the Goizueta Business School was ranked as the thirty-third best full-time MBA program in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and it was ranked among the top fifty business schools in America by U.S. News and World Report. The same year the school's marketing program was ranked tenth by the Wall Street Journal. The business school also has attracted a number of prominent guest speakers, including former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, investment banker Warren Buffett, clothing designer Kenneth Cole (an Emory University alumnus), and former U.S. attorney general Janet Reno.

The relationship between Emory University and the Coca-Cola Company has a long history, spanning nearly a century. In 1914 Coca-Cola's owner, Asa Candler, gave Emory a $1 million endowment at the encouragement of his brother, Warren Akin Candler, a former Emory College president. The longtime Coke chairman Robert Woodruff and his brother George gave Emory a $105 million gift in 1979, at the time the country's largest single donation given to a university. Goizueta, a protégé of Robert Woodruff's, emulated his mentor's interest in the school's continued success, becoming an Emory University trustee in 1980 and donating $1.5 million to the university's business school in 1979, which in 1994 was renamed in his honor.

In the fall of 1997 Goizueta—an innovative entrepreneur who is credited with increasing Coca-Cola's stock value by 3,500 percent during his tenure as chairman—became ill with lung cancer, which caused him to miss the September dedication of the $25 million building housing the Goizueta Business School. He died at age sixty-five on October 18 at Emory Hospital. On October 21 business school staff, students, and faculty held a moment of silence at the day and time of his funeral.

In February 1998 the school received a $20 million gift from the Goizueta estate,

Goizueta Foundation Center

which nearly doubled the endowment of the school and allowed it to expand in both size and stature. In spring 2004 construction began on a $33.4 million expansion of the Goizueta Business School with the Goizueta Foundation Center for Research and Doctoral Education, which will house the school's Ph.D., Executive MBA, and Executive programs. When completed in 2005, the five-level facility will provide an additional 83,000 square feet for students and faculty.