Economic reforms in 1991 have morphed the South Asian country into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, and Canadian MBA schools are tapping into the educational prospects to feed Indian students’ hunger for programs with an international flavour, wrote The Globe and Mail Nov. 3.
“That is why we engaged in India – because the opportunities are endless,” Dezsö Horváth, dean of York University’s Schulich School of Business, said from New Delhi, where he was in meetings for the 2010 launch in Mumbai of the Toronto school’s new India MBA Program.
A collaborative effort with India’s S. P. Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), the Schulich India MBA is solely for students in India who take classes in Mumbai the first year, and in Toronto the second year. There are courses in 19 specializations, including finance, marketing, international business and entrepreneurships, real property and infrastructure, public-sector management and health industry management.
“The expectation is that we’re training global citizens,” so they can take their business skills to any country in the world, Ashwin Joshi, director of the India MBA program who was in New Delhi with Horváth, said in a phone interview.
Aditya Saraogi, a Mumbai resident with four years of experience in banking, was attracted to the twin-country MBA concept by Schulich, which has been developing educational ties with India for 15 years. In an e-mail interview, Saraogi said from Mumbai that he was looking for a world-ranked MBA program to help him develop a strong foundation in business management and gain global insight into core issues.
- York University’s first dual business-school degree began with a “gentlemen’s handshake”, in the words of Su-Lan Tenn, wrote The Globe and Mail Nov. 3.
Officials from the Schulich School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management, which is based at Northwestern University in Illinois, kept running into each other at the same recruiting events.
As the deans from both schools chatted, they discovered they had similar goals: to establish a foothold in the other’s country, said Tenn, who is program director at Schulich. “On our side, Dean (Dezsö) Horváth…wanted to leap over the [Canadian] competition with the first cross-border executive MBA program,” she said.
Such was the beginning of the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA Program. The program began in 2002 and has graduated dozens of students since.
The idea is to give the University a toehold in other countries, increasing its international street cred and forming partnerships that will increase investment in each other, said Schulich’s Charmaine Courtis. “As a strategy we will continue to evolve dual-degree programs with other partners,” said Courtis, the school’s executive director of student services and international relations. “I manage about 50 different exchange agreements. We’re connected to a huge network of schools, and (Peking) is but one of them.”
H1N1 sick days could hamper Canada’s fragile recovery
It’s the big question facing many companies, wrote The Globe and Mail Nov. 3: What effect will the H1N1 pandemic have on business?
It’s too early to estimate costs for Canadian businesses. But they could easily outstrip the $2-billion price tag of the SARS outbreak in 2003, said Professor Amin Mawani, acting director of the Health Industry Management Program in the Schulich School of Business at York University. “It will be significantly greater than SARS,” Mawani said. “That was largely a hospital-based illness. This is community-based and national.”
Newborn brains profoundly similar
It used to be said that biology is destiny, as if each human brain contained its own personal genetic limitations, wrote the Toronto Star Nov. 3. Today, breathtaking findings by neuroscientists are showing that biology is the ultimate level playing field. The human brain at birth holds within it untold, often untapped, equal opportunity only slightly influenced by genetic prophecy.
Stuart Shanker, Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology and Philosophy in York’s Faculty of Health, says that brain surgeons have concluded that every adult brain is so different that even basic landmarks can be hard to find. “The idea that there are brain topographies turns out to be nonsense,” he says.
Players love to return to hockey mecca, says York sports psychologist
A first overall NHL draft pick coming home to Ontario to play the Toronto Maple Leafs is a match made in heaven, wrote the London Free Press Nov. 3.
Ex-Leaf assistant Paul Dennis has a good handle on why the first-rounders get so hyped to come back. “No. 1, it’s the social standpoint of thanking a lot of people for their support,” said Dennis, who retired as Leaf development coach this year to become adjunct professor of sports psychology at York University and the University of Toronto.
“No. 2, it’s being on stage in the hockey mecca, and No. 3, you’re drafted that high, you want to show Toronto what it could’ve had, even though the Leafs aren’t always in control of their draft picks. It could be a huge distraction for any of the (top picks), but most never allow it to be.”
Which begs the question why some Toronto-area players on the Maple Leafs haven’t embraced the same spotlight through the years. Matt Stajan and John Mitchell look well-adjusted, but without naming names, Dennis said he had to work with many players to try to get them comfortable in their own city. “One reason is they choose not to be, they lose focus, they have trouble dealing with distractions and they go down the path to struggling,” Dennis said.
Building pipeline in war zone
A letter by Dennis Peacock on “Big Oil” and Canada’s mission in Afghanistan in BC’s Clearwater Times Nov. 2 cited the written work of Todd Gordon, a contract faculty member in the Department of Political Science in York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. Gordon states, wrote Peacock, “Wherever Canadian companies go, especially in the resource sector, they leave a trail of economic and human rights disasters behind them.”
GV home to new nurse practitioner
There is a new nurse practitioner at the Grand Valley Medical Centre, wrote The Orangeville Banner Nov. 2. After finishing high school, Selina Godfrey (BScN Spec. Hons. ’05) joined the Royal Canadian Air Force…graduating as a medic. During her nearly nine years in the air force she served on Cold Lake, Trenton and North Bay bases.
When she left the air force,…Godfrey went on to York University’s Faculty of Health and completed a bachelor of science in nursing with a certification as a nurse practitioner.