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CONTACT: communications@mail.cox.smu.edu

DALLAS, Texas (SMU) -MBA students at SMU's Cox School of Business will take a hi-tech road trip. The group will visit six of Austin's most promising hi-tech companies as part of Cox's career management program.

Designed as an opportunity for both companies and students to "show and tell" rather than recruit and interview, the trip will provide students with an in depth view of each company. The students will tour and listen to presentations given by CEOs, presidents, and/or vice presidents at each locale.

"The employers can actually see the caliber of our students," said Dennis Grindle, director of the Career Management Office at the Cox School. "The trip will help our students to market themselves so that employers can actually see and listen to them…the questions they ask, their presence and bearing will also help open doors for our students next year."

The two-day trip begins Thursday, April 5, with a visit to the Austin Technology Incubator, one of Austin's largest incubators that supports high growth companies in a variety of technology-based industries. The students will tour ATI and its 16 member companies that office out of the incubator's 45,000-square-foot facility, including ActiveInk, Austin Social Venture Partners, B2G Source, CODEONLINE, Inc., Computer Moms International Corporation, Dunti Corporation, Ecolibrium, IDriveOnline, Isochron Date Corporation, Protelum, SchoolPeople, Shield Networks, Speedgate, Spiraco, Web Office, and Zero Wait State.

After ATI, the students will then meet with Technical Business Network. A non-profit professional membership organization, TBN fosters business leadership for technology companies through a forum that encourages the exchange of ideas and experiences. Membership consists of 400 small and medium-sized companies in 22 states and 17 countries.

The students will also tour CyBerCorp, a direct access broker specializing in electronic trading and brokerage services. At the end of the day, the students will visit marchFIRST, a professional services firm that creates and delivers customer outreach and enterprise improvement solutions for the manufacturing; financial services; high tech and telecommunications; consumer products/retail; health care; media, entertainment and communications; and transportation/travel and leisure industries in 16 countries worldwide.

Friday's events begin with Exterprise, a provider of software solutions for building and managing collaborative business networks and marketplaces. The MBA students will then visit with executives of Broadwing Communications, which owns and operates the first, national, and next-generation Internet Protocol network. The two-day tour will wrap up with meetings at TManage, Inc., a company that specializes in setting up full-scale telecommuting programs for client companies.

The Cox School's Career Management Office is also organizing a trip for MBA students to attend the West Coast Silicon Valley MBA Consortium at the end of March, a recruitment event involving 15 consortium schools, 300 students, and recruiters from Silicon Valley's hi-tech industries.

The Career Management Office facilitates connections between Cox MBA students and prospective hiring employers. For students, it assists in developing and implementing effective career and job search strategies. Through a series of required and optional workshops, students gain proficiency in basic career skills as well as gain exposure to different career opportunities through industry and functional panels. One-on-one counseling is also available to offer personalized attention to the specific needs of each student.

The Cox School of Business is consistently ranked among the nation's top MBA programs by Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, and Financial Times.