Know a successful Aggie business owner or leader overseeing an established, growing company? Mays Business School’s Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship is now accepting nominations for the second annual Aggie 100 program, which celebrates the 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or Aggie-led businesses in the world.

Applicants will be ranked by compound annual revenue growth rate for the 2003 to 2005 period. Graduates from every Texas A&M degree program are welcome. The 100 companies with the greatest percentage growth will be named members of the 2006 Aggie 100.

Last year’s Aggie 100 was a campus hit, with more than 600 people joining in the lunch celebration to congratulate the 2005 honorees. While they were on campus, Aggie 100 representatives also spoke to 1,200 students in classes and student organizations. This year’s program promises to be even larger.

To learn more about qualifications and to nominate a company, visit http://aggie100.com/. The deadline for nominations is May 31. Aggie 100 inductees will be honored in a campus ceremony on Oct.13.

Pablo D. Marvin ’66, who calls both Mexico City and College Station home, was named the 2006 Texas A&M University International Alumnus.

Marvin returned to his native Mexico after graduating, embarking on a successful career in various businesses — most recently as real estate executive and CEO of Cia de Inversionistas de Mexico. He has opened up prime space in the heart of Mexico City’s business district for A&M facilities.

A&M and the Association of Former Students jointly sponsor the International Alumnus Award, which honors graduates who were not U.S. citizens when attending A&M and who have gone on to achieve prominence within their fields.

Mays continues to lead all other business schools in the nation when it comes to sending graduates to technical internships with accounting rule-makers at the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

Two more students graduating from Mays this year will join the FASB as postgraduate assistants on standards-setting projects, bringing the school’s total to 17 since the FASB program was launched in the early 1980s. That’s nearly twice as many as any other business program in the nation — only the University of Wisconsin comes close with 10 students selected in the same time period for the competitive program.

The FASB establishes and improves standards of financial accounting and reporting for the guidance and education of the public. Ten students are selected each year to work with the FASB on major agenda projects or short-term practice and implementation issues.

Only some 51 schools of the 350 accredited U.S. business schools have had at least one student selected for the prestigious year-long postgraduate program since 1982. After Texas A&M and Wisconsin, other top business schools have sent eight or less students to the FASB program over the two-decade time period, including Ohio State, Notre Dame, the University of Texas and the University of North Carolina.

The students chosen from Mays this year are both undergraduate and master’s degree graduates of the five-year Professional Program at Mays. Bradley McGrath will graduate in May with a BBA and master’s in accounting, and will join the FASB this July. Blake Beckendorff, an accounting undergrad earning his master’s in finance in August, will begin his postgraduate work at the FASB in January 2007. He held internships with KPMG and Deloitte in 2005.

McGrath, a Houston native and auditing specialist who held an internship with PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2005, says the FASB work will put him on the path to eventually running his own accounting firm. “I’m hoping for a challenging experience that will sharpen my technical skills, as well as my abilities to research and solve complex problems,” he said.

Through the FASB, graduates of the nation’s top business programs come to have an in-depth understanding of the roles played by preparers, auditors and users of financial information.

“I am delighted that we have two more graduates beginning their careers with the FASB,” said James Benjamin, head of Mays’ Department of Accounting. “I know that this opportunity provides an incredible jumpstart to careers in the financial community. Our success in this competitive program is testimony to both the quality of our Professional Program and the incredible personal traits of our students.”

The MBA program continues to be regarded as a top business program, most recently ranked among the best programs in U.S. News & World Report‘s 2007 “Top Business Schools” listing. Mays is tied for 14th among public schools (tied for 31st overall) and maintains its top spot for MBA placement at graduation.

Mays’ rankings rose from 15th public and 32nd overall in the 2006 version of the rankings.

As in 2006, Mays led the nation (now tied with Harvard) for the percentage of students who were employed at graduation. In addition, the program ranked second in terms of employment three months following graduation, when 96.6 percent of the MBAs who sought work had a position. This is an improvement from last year, when 95.3 percent of Mays MBAs were employed three months after earning their degrees.

Mays’ MBA program was also ranked 2nd most affordable in the U.S.

“We are pleased with the continued progress and success of our MBA program,” said Dean Jerry Strawser. “What continues to be most satisfying is the employment data for our students. These data reflect the hard work of our MBA faculty, staff and students in creating an outstanding learning environment.”

U.S. News & World Report surveys 400 MBA programs for its annual listings of the top business programs. Rankings for the magazine are based on a number of factors including placement, student selectivity and peer and recruiter assessments.

Mays’ MBA program is highly ranked in terms of the return on investment of its graduates, coming in 9th among public schools in Forbes. The London-based Financial Times also gives Mays the top spot (tied) among U.S. public programs for its MBA placement, and similarly ranks Mays 2nd in terms of value-for-money. The Princeton Review counts Mays among the top 5 best-administered programs and among the top 10 in student competitiveness.