Ohio State University: Fisher

Fisher College of Business is the business school of Ohio State, a public university located in Columbus, the largest city in the state.

Founded in 1916 as the College of Commerce and Journalism, it had three changes of name before 1993 when it received a $20 million gift from Max Fisher, a regional business owner who had attended the then College of Commerce and Administration on a college football scholarship in the late 1920s.

Buildings funded by the donation from Fisher, whose nephew Stephen Ross performed a similar role at the University of Michigan, form the bulk of what the college calls "one of the few totally integrated management education campuses", with five halls constructed in the 1990s complemented by a more recent hotel and conference centre.

The school, kept "intentionally small" with annual MBA classes of around 100 on a campus with 60,000 students, places an emphasis on cultural awareness and the balance in business between ambition and ethics.

It has strong local and regional focuses, with research centres including the Ohio Center for Real Estate. In 2017 its Global Trade Network received the Department of Commerce’s Presidential Award, equivalent to a Queen’s Award for Export, for work with small and medium enterprises which included a 6-student team helping an Ohio company break into the Brazilian market.

The Fisher Board Fellowship programme enables MBA students to serve as non-voting directors of 20 local companies, while the Student Investment Management Fund was recently estimated as worth $9 million. The college has hosted the American Accounting Association Hall of Fame since 1950.