There is so much going on in CBA these days it is hard to keep track of everything. We have been very successful in making new faculty hires for next year. At this point, we will have new faculty joining us in accounting, marketing and supply chain management. We are actively recruiting or have offers out in finance, economics and actuarial science as well. So again we will have many new faculty faces joining us in the fall. What a transformation with 11 new faculty last year and 8-10 this coming year.
 
We are deep in the process of reviewing and accepting applications to our brand new CBA Honors Academy. Modeled after the Raikes School, this program is designed to attract high achieving students, who want to become leaders in business. We will take 40 students as freshmen; they will take all their required business courses together as a cohort in an accelerated curriculum. They will enjoy enrichment activities, be required to study abroad or take an internship, compete in business competitions and many other activities. We were amazed at how many applications we had from tremendously well qualified students for the November deadline. Selected students and their parents came for an on-campus interview and spent half a day learning more about CBA and the University. This is going to be a terrific new program which we are all excited about.
 
A college committee of faculty and staff are meeting regularly to develop ideas about the type of teaching/learning features we want in the new building. The excitement is palpable. We have commitments of around $25 million towards the building, so we are off to a great start. Our goal is $84 million, with the hope of breaking ground in the spring of 2014.
 
U.S. News & World Report ranked our on-line MBA as 17^th in the US among 149 such programs and 2^nd in the Big Ten.
 
We recently created a new position called director of external relations and hired Laura Niles who you will be getting to know. Her job, in part, is to reach out to CBA alums and help strengthen our connections. She is creating a clearinghouse for guest speakers, coordinating all our advisory boards, organizing a series of celebrations in the fall and many other important activities. Please feel free to contact her with news, questions and suggestions at lniles2@unl.edu. We want to hear from you.
 
Good things are happening. Many of you have been such strong supporters of CBA. We thank you for all that you have done and look forward to sharing more good news with you in the future.

All the best,
 
Donde Published: February 13, 2013