Renderings images of the Innovation Complex at the University of Toronto Mississauga. This building will house the new Institute for Management and Innovation.
The Globe's biweekly business-school news roundup.
Born in Brazil of German parents, raised in Germany and Senegal and recently graduated from a U.S. university, Tobias Mueller-Glodde looked globally for a graduate business program that played to his deep-seated interest in sustainable practices.
He found what he wanted in a two-year master of science in sustainability, a new program offered by the Institute for Management and Innovation at the University of Toronto Mississauga. A business school in all but name (that honour at U of T rests with its Rotman School of Management), the institute was formally established last year to serve a niche market in sector-based management education.
"We have been working since early 2000 on a centre [built] around the idea of teaching management around specific disciplines," institute director Hugh Gunz says. "We felt these were sectors that were not being well served elsewhere, so there was a convincing logic for us."
The institute will be housed on the Mississauga campus in the Innovation Complex, which opens in September with funding from the university and a $10-million contribution over 10 years from the city of Mississauga. Specialty master's degrees in accounting, innovation, biotechnology and investigative and forensic accounting, previously offered at the Mississauga campus, moved to the institute on July 1, with the sustainability specialty added for September. With neither plans nor ambitions to offer an MBA, the institute also offers undergraduate bachelor degrees in commerce and business administration.
For his specialty degree, Mr. Mueller-Glodde will join an inaugural class of 30 students, including 10 from nine different countries. Cross-disciplinary in orientation, the program seeks out undergraduates from diverse academic backgrounds who want to pursue sustainability management with a concentration in management or science.
"They put everything I was looking for in one concentrated two-year program," says Mr. Mueller-Glodde. A recent business administration undergraduate from the University of Richmond in Virginia, he plans to participate in a three-day "boot camp," held before the official start of classes in September, for non-science students to brush up their knowledge of science.
Prof. Gunz says "the demand is very strong" for the sustainability degree, given growing corporate interest in embedding practices that reduce waste, duplication and environmental damage.
Domestic fees (with international tuition in brackets) for the specialty degrees range between $28,000 ($43,000) for a one-year master in management innovation to $73,000 ($97,000) for the 27-month master of management and professional accounting.
UNB's Saint John business faculty seeks to raise its profile
Some business schools fly under the radar, but that leaves them no less ambitious to play in the big leagues.
One example is the faculty of business at the Saint John campus of the University of New Brunswick. Last month, the university approved the transfer of five tenured (or tenure-track) and a dozen part-time economics professors to the business faculty from the department of social sciences, a move championed by business dean Fazley Siddiq.
"Now what we have is critical mass within the faculty of business," says Dr. Siddiq, an economist who became dean 10 months ago after 28 years at Dalhousie University in Halifax. "There were natural synergies that we felt were being underutilized." The faculty now stands at 32, from 25 last fall, counting new hires and retirements.
The addition of the economics professors is part of a larger campaign by the faculty to win full membership in the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, an international accreditation body for business schools. The business faculty already has entry-level status, but hopes to receive full accreditation by 2016.
The Saint John faculty is not without bragging rights currently.
Dr. Siddiq notes that his faculty's MBA program is the largest among Atlantic Canada business schools, with an incoming cohort of 90 to 95 students this fall. As well, about 90 per cent of full-time MBA students come from more than a dozen countries, with almost 40 per cent of undergraduates from abroad – a nod to the reality of a shrinking population of university-age students in the region.
"In New Brunswick and Saint John, the only way we can grow and flourish and achieve the goals we have set for ourselves is to rely on students from abroad," he says. The faculty has targeted Africa and South America as key continents for international recruitment but also plans to market more aggressively than in the past in Central and Western Canada.
"To stay where we are we will have to run quite fast," says Dr. Siddiq. "And if we want to advance and grow and rebuild, then we will have to run really fast."
Business professor named to lead institute
Sauder School of Business professor Moura Quayle has been named director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia. Prof. Quayle, who teaches design strategies for business innovation at Sauder, will remain on the faculty at Sauder while carrying out her work at the institute, which features a multidisciplinary approach to solving problems.
Jennifer Lewington