$1 million alumni gift will help Kelley School, Consortium enhance diversity in business education: News at IU: Indiana University

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana University Kelley College of Small business alumni Derica Rice and Robin Nelson-Rice want to give much more minority college students the same chance they credit rating with assisting launch their productive professions at Fortune 500 firms.

The couple, who met as MBA college students at the Kelley School in Bloomington just before graduating in 1990, have considering the fact that offered exceptional management and provider to the college and the state of Indiana. Robin and Derica Rice are making a gift of $1 million to support students who are MBA learners at the Kelley School and fellows of the Consortium for Graduate Analyze in Management. Far better recognized as The Consortium, the countrywide corporation co-founded by the Kelley Faculty in 1966 improves variety in small business education as a result of benefit-primarily based aid and mentoring for African American, Hispanic and Indigenous American college students.

“We are honored and grateful to Derica Rice and Robin Nelson-Rice for this generous gift that will provide priceless prospects to our students and help Indiana University in its mission to improve variety and make certain IU is welcoming to all,” IU President Michael A. McRobbie said. “The Rice family’s long record of services to IU and the state is extraordinary, and we will generally be appreciative of their incredible support and motivation to IU.”

The Rices’ reward generates the Rice Consortium Fellows application to increase variety and inclusion at the Kelley Faculty and support its Whole-Time MBA Program proceed to attract lots of of the greatest and brightest underrepresented college students. Their generosity will assist yearly fellowships for two 1st-year Consortium pupils and two second-12 months Consortium pupils, who will be referred to as Rice Consortium Fellows. The pair credits their Consortium fellowships with opening essential doors for them, and they would like to do the identical for other deserving minority college students.

“The Consortium’s 30 by 30 strategic initiative is the primary driver of our recent method,” Consortium Govt Director and CEO Peter J. Aranda III claimed. “The initiative phone calls for just about every member university to attain an underrepresented minority enrollment of 30 p.c in just their total-time MBA programs by the yr 2030 — a determine that is far more regular with U.S. population demographics. This generous present from Derica Rice and Robin Nelson-Rice will guide the Kelley College and The Consortium with satisfying this aim.

“At The Consortium, we are exceptionally grateful to the Rices for their extended-time period guidance of and demonstrated dedication to our mission.”

The Kelley College will also continue to aid The Consortium’s once-a-year Orientation Program and Profession Discussion board in honor of Derica Rice and Robin Nelson-Rice.

“We are deeply grateful to Robin and Derica Rice for their generous assist of this journey,” explained Idalene “Idie” Kesner, dean of the Kelley School and the Frank P. Popoff Chair of Strategic Management. “Their reward is a amazing example of ‘paying it forward.’ The chances their reward gives to foreseeable future enterprise leaders — the gift of instruction — generates gains much, considerably higher than a single system or university or university. It is the gift that benefits overall communities.

“We have very long regarded the significance of raising recognition of the added benefits of varied finding out environments and endorsing an ecosystem that is respectful and supportive of all. We recognize we have more perform to do, but at the similar time, we are energized about our journey and hope these new scholarships encourage other individuals to be part of us in advertising larger variety, fairness and inclusion.”

Considering the fact that earning his MBA from Kelley, Rice has expended extra than 30 years as a wellness care government, such as a 27-calendar year vocation at Eli Lilly and Co. He most not long ago served as the govt vice president of CVS Health and president of CVS Caremark, the firm’s pharmacy benefits management organization. He at the moment serves as a member of the board of directors for the Walt Disney Co., Focus on Corp. and Bristol Myers Squibb Co.

Rice was also a trustee of IU from 2007 to 2016. He serves as a founding member of the IU Black Philanthropy Circle, the university’s very first affinity-centered providing circle that formulates applications and guidelines to increase engagement and philanthropy in bigger instruction to help Black alumni, school, staff members, students, donors and allies.

Nelson-Rice, a indigenous Hoosier, furthermore has appreciated a fulfilling career, like executive positions in advertising at Eli Lilly and AT&T. She is a philanthropist and volunteers on a range of group boards and establishments, which include the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana.

This present counted toward the $3.9 billion marketing campaign, For All: The Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign.

The Consortium

In the mid-1960s, Kelley partnered with business enterprise schools at Washington College of St. Louis and the University of Wisconsin to build The Consortium, with a aim of recruiting far more African Us citizens into MBA programs. A 1963 report uncovered that not one particular African American was then utilized in a management situation at a Fortune 500 corporation. Out of 12,000 learners enrolled in MBA applications across the country that year, only about 50 were African Us residents.

A lot more than 900 Consortium students have gained MBA levels from Kelley since the organization’s inception. A number of alumni, which includes the Rices, have highly developed to major administration roles at top American companies, these kinds of as Nike, Starbucks and ConAgra. In the past 10 years, the Kelley School has productively recruited a lot more than 200 Consortium students. Nearly 600 pupils enroll annually in MBA applications at 20 other member universities.