The Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis, announced a new partnership Monday with two of the nation's largest public pension funds to attract top-tier business students to careers in investment management.

The management school will offer annual fellowships of $3,000 and $5,000 to a select number of Masters of Business Administration interns who will train in the investment offices of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS).

The management school will award the research fellowships through its newly created Center for Investor Welfare and Corporate Responsibility.

'Real-world experience'

"This is a great partnership," said Brad Barber, the center's director and a professor of finance at UC Davis. "Students at the Graduate School of Management will get valuable real-world experience, while CalPERS and CalSTRS will gain access to the top-notch students from a nationally ranked MBA program."

Under the fellowship, students will work part time weekly and possibly full time during the summer while pursuing their MBAs. They typically begin internships during the first year of their MBA programs and continue as interns for two years. Internships are awarded throughout the year.

Students selected will have opportunities to work in the areas of global equity, fixed income, private equity, and corporate governance and corporate responsibility.

Identifying promising new talent

"This fellowship program promises to give students a high-level, hands-on investment experience that they probably couldn't get anywhere else in the Sacramento region," said Mark Anson, CalPERS' chief investment officer. "It will help us identify promising new talent for careers in the investment management industry."

Added Chris Ailman, CalSTRS' chief investment officer, "CalSTRS is very pleased to help initiate this fellowship program. Since their master work focuses on investor welfare and corporate responsibility, an internship at CalSTRS provides them a tremendous opportunity to put theory into practice under the guidance of our responsible, experienced investment professionals."

About the partners

CalPERS is the nation's largest public pension fund with assets of more than $196 billion. The system provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.4 million state and local public employees and their families.

At $133 billion, CalSTRS is the third-largest public pension fund in the United States. It provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits to California's educators from kindergarten through community college, serving more than 755,000 members and their families.

The UC Davis Graduate School of Management weaves ethics throughout its curriculum, and its faculty includes leading researchers in corporate governance, corporate responsibility and white-collar crime.

Established in 1981, the school provides management education to 120 full-time and more than 325 working professional MBA students in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area.

It offers the youngest and smallest public MBA program ever to be ranked in the top 50 by the three most prominent business school surveys -- U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek.

Students interested in the fellowships should contact Kathy Klenzendorf, director of career services for the management school, at krklenzendorf@ucdavis.edu or (530) 752-4003.