THE KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT TEAMS WITH TOP CONSULTANCY, MARAKON

EVANSTON, Ill., Nov. 5—The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, a global leader in management education, announced its strategic partnership with one of the world’s premier strategy consulting firms, Marakon Associates.

Throughout his first year as dean of the Kellogg School, Dipak C. Jain traveled around the world gathering feedback from Kellogg School alumni, corporate partners and recruiters to assess the changing marketplace and business education. To supplement this valuable information, Dean Jain explained that a partnership with Marakon offered "an objective, external viewpoint to challenge the school’s thinking."

The Kellogg School began working with Marakon in July 2002 in an effort to analyze the business education market and identify opportunities to further strengthen the school’s top-tier position. The ongoing effort, initially focused solely on the MBA programs, has involved interviews with Kellogg faculty and staff, student surveys and discussions with recruiters and executives of leading corporations. The pro-bono project also includes an analysis of the Kellogg School’s Executive Education program.

"The insights surfaced from their research and analyses were extremely helpful and will have a significant impact on our priorities and initiatives in the coming years," said Dean Jain.

Randy DeGeer, a partner in Marakon’s Chicago office, said: "We are delighted to be working with Kellogg and its exceptional faculty and staff on this and other initiatives. The relationship is extremely valuable to our firm. In addition, many past and present Marakon consultants have graduated from Kellogg, and we wanted to give something back to the school."

The Kellogg School and Marakon are also partnering on other initiatives, including an invitation-only dinner forum for senior executives to be held in December.

About Kellogg School of Management:
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, founded in 1908, is home to a renowned research-based faculty and MBA students from more than 50 countries and six continents. In October 2003, the Kellogg School was named the top MBA program in the world for the second consecutive year by The Economist Intelligence Unit, a division of The Economist Group. In 2002, BusinessWeek magazine ranked the Kellogg School the number one graduate school of business in the United States, an honor it has achieved four times since the biennial survey began in 1988.