Nation's First E-Commerce Program Holds Graduation
While colleges around the country announce plans for future e-commerce degrees, Marlboro College in Vermont will hold its second commencement for graduates obtaining their Master of Science in Internet Strategy Management. Another class of k-12 teachers will obtain the country's only Teaching with Internet Technologies graduate degree.
The commencement for The Graduate Center of Marlboro College (http://www.gradcenter.marlboro.edu) is set for Friday, August 27, at 4 p.m. at the Whittemore Theater on the Marlboro College Campus, which is 2.5 hours from Boston (taking Route 2 West to I-91 North).
The speaker will e-commerce mogul Shikhar Ghosh, chairman and CEO of iBelong Networks as well as chairman and co-founder of Open Market. Ghosh has been featured on the cover of FORBES Magazine as an top "hot dog" Internet mogul.
This is actually the second commencement ceremony for this program, the first was last Fall, but the program is a first -- the precursor for all the e-commerce related degrees that are popping up across the country. (Previous articles from when the programs were launched can be found at http://www.gradcenter.marlboro.edu)
Marlboro's two Internet-related programs were started in the fall of 1998. Since that time a rash of e- commerce degrees have been launched -- new ones seem to be announced daily... But Marlboro's was the first.
Speaker Shikhar Ghosh is the chairman/co- founder of the highly success Internet company "Open Market" and chairman and CEO of iBelong Networks. Ghosh has been featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine under the title "Masters of the ...New Universe: Amidst All the Hype, an industry emerges" (July 27, 1998 issue).
In that issue, Forbes writer Eric Nee wrote:
"[Ghosh's] story is about finding a way to create a business in which everything seemed possible because nothing existed.... To survive, Open Market had to specialize as well....This includes everything from taking orders to handling credit cards....It was a bold move, and boldness was clearly what was called for. Today Open Market is a leading supplier of Internet commerce software. More than 1,000 Web sites use Open Market software to transact business. Its clients include Disney, which sells on the Internet everything you can buy in one of its shopping mall stores...'The companies that survives focused on one area and then put a lot of resources behind it,' says Ghosh. 'GBF. Get Big Fast.'"
Ghosh has an MBA from Harvard (1980), and his undergraduate degree from the University of Bombay. He was a partner at the Boston Consulting Group, the CEO of Appex Corporation from 1988 through 1994, and is the Chairman and co-founder of Open Market as well as the Chairman and CEO of iBelong Networks.
How did such a small, relatively unknown Vermont college that take the lead in what is fast becoming a national trend in higher education? The program was the serendipitous brainchild of the college's new president, Paul LeBlanc, who came to Marlboro from Houghton Mifflin, where he was Vice President in charge of their higher learning projects.
LeBlanc's credentials are posted at http://www.technologyfair.com/experts/paulleblanc.htm He may be contacted for comment at 802-258-9245 or [email protected]
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Contact: Paul LeBlanc, Founder and Director of The Graduate Center of Marlboro College, 802-258-9235, [email protected] Tanya Tabachnikoff, Director of Media Relations, 802-258-9263, [email protected] Maria Basescu, Director of Marketing for Graduate Center, 802-258-9211 Mary Greene, Director of Academic Programming for Graduate Center, 802-258-9210
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