Dezsö Horváth is frustrated, reported The Globe and Mail Aug. 27. In two decades as dean of York University’s Schulich School of Business, he has made it his life’s work to create business men and women who see the world as their oyster. Its international orientation has made Schulich a global contender.
So why, oh why, isn’t Canada? Over the recent years of rampant globalization, its share of global trade has actually fallen. A few years ago, Horváth says, Canada at least had two or three companies among the top 100 transnational companies. Now it has none. "We really lost out," he says. "We are almost nowhere."
Canada, he says, "is heaven for an internationally oriented person." Yet he believes this country has largely squandered that advantage. "Somehow there came this attitude that we are too small to compete globally. Many are just content to compete in Canada, or go to the United States."
Horváth has battled for years to change that attitude. When he took over as dean he decided to take a flyer and do what no other school in Canada was doing at the time: make Schulich a truly international school with its eyes on the world’s horizons. Schulich has helped create a new breed of globally aware graduates, but Horváth is quick to admit that while it is big by Canadian standards – one-third of business graduates in Ontario come from Schulich – it is a small force in the scheme of things.
And in Canada, he says, "we don’t have the opportunity to wait years and years." As Schulich itself has shown, globalization can be a "win-win" as both sides profit from a growing exchange of goods, skills and ideas. But first, Canadians have to get in the game.
Why a journalist got her MBA
The Shelter Valley Folk Festival is a passion with Katharine Partridge (MBA ’01), a former Northumberland County resident and specialist in stakeholder engagement and corporate sustainability communications to companies around the world, reported the Cobourg Daily Star Aug. 27.
She was the festival’s first board chair when local songwriter and performer Aengus Finnan spearheaded the festival’s launch in 2003. Bringing with her experience as both a journalist and former stage production manager, Partridge was part of the festival’s fundraising, is on its operating committee and is the festival’s business manager.
Asked how she went from journalism to national and international corporate sustainability communications, she explained how a job for the Recycling Council of Canada “was my introduction into environmental issues and the complexity of environmental issues in a global world. I wanted to contribute, and realized I needed to speak the language of business. I decided I needed an MBA. What the Schulich School of Business at York University offered attracted me because it was part time. David Wheeler was chair of the Business & Sustainability Program. He became my mentor.”
Natives get a hand up from Indo-Canadian
How can people in a first-rate country like Canada be living in Third-World conditions? That disturbed Aditya Jha, 52, president and CEO of Osellus Inc. – a software company with offices in Toronto and Thailand, reported The Toronto Sun Aug. 27.
Seeing conditions of First Nations people on the reserves, Jha decided to do something to help. He met Grand Chief Stan Beardy of Nishnawbe Aski Nation and kicked off a new job sharing and leadership program targeted at young, educated people. He has also established a few endowments to help mostly the First Nation people: "My endowment at George Brown College is for $250,000. I have an endowment at Trent University for $100,000; another one at Ryerson for $440,000 and at York University for $25,000."
York grad starts a drama class for kids
For an adolescent wanting to come out of her shell, or a young person interested in learning a new skill, Huronia Players Theatre Group is offering an eight-week drama course this fall, reported Midland Free Press Aug. 27. “It’s not only for the fun and exciting acting stuff you get to do in class, but you have all kinds of skills that if you don’t go on to be an actor or whatever, you have improved confidence,” said course instructor Betony Main (BA ’03). Main, 27, has been involved with Huronia Players since the age of nine. She studied theatre at York University and now teaches high school drama.
Throw etiquette out the window when eating sweet corn
In these months when there’s fresh sweet corn on the table, we should repeal that rule about not eating with your elbows on the table, wrote an Owen Sound Sun Times columnist Aug. 27. He cited classicist Margaret Visser, who taught Latin and Greek at York from 1974 to 1978. In her 1995 book The Rituals of Dinner, she argues skeptically about the tendency in modern western culture for people to eat without touching our food "with anything but metal implements." She goes to great lengths to describe elaborate rules for eating with the fingers from cultures where the use of hands is considered preferable and even more hygienic than knives and forks.