Andrew Crane, professor of business ethics and director of the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business at York University’s Schulich School of Business, says schools that previously placed little emphasis on ethics are now going the other way. “At Schulich we’ve had a business ethics program since the early 1990s and a sustainability program, too,” Crane said in the Financial Post Sept. 23. “Since the crisis we’ve merged those programs to take a more comprehensive approach to dealing with responsible business issues. We have focused much more on integration through the curriculum. That was already happening but the doors are easier to push now than they were before.” Read full story.
Londoners rally for detained Canadians
Londoners gathered yesterday afternoon at Victoria Park for a peaceful rally protesting the ongoing detainment of Western University Professor Tarek Loubani and York University Professor John Greyson in Egyptian prison, reported the Gazette Sept. 25. Students, Londoners and medical professionals dressed in their scrubs all gathered at the Victoria Park band shell holding signs demanding Loubani and Greyson’s release. Loubani was on a humanitarian medical mission advancing medical education and emergency medical care in a Gaza hospital and Greyson was prepping for a documentary he planned to make on Loubani’s work. Read full story.
How to reward true high school academic excellence
“The collapse of standards in high schools is a boring refrain,” wrote York University physics Professor William van Wijngaarden in University Affairs Sept. 25. “All too many first-year university science students cannot do single-digit multiplication. If you don’t believe me, just ask a student to evaluate seven times nine. A young lady claiming to have an Honours BSc from a historic Toronto institution answered, “64, no 56.” Forget about asking to evaluate a fraction, let alone a trigonometric function. The problem, of course, is the calculator addiction.” Read full story.
Keeping finance students on top of an ever-changing regulatory environment
For a long time business leaders have said regulations can be a first order constraint to executing strategy….And that’s why York University’s Schulich School of Business together with the Toronto Centre have spent the past two years developing a Master of Finance program with a specialization in regulatory affairs. The program launches this fall. “One of the fallouts from the financial sector crisis was the understanding that regulators needed new skills and that industry needed to better understand what the regulators are thinking and doing,” said James Darroch, director of Schulich’s financial services program, in the Financial Post Sept. 25. “There is benefit to bringing both together in an appropriate program.” Read full story.
‘I didn’t go to law school to become an academic’
Experiential learning is ramping up at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. Associate Dean James Stribopoulos says the motivation for their new “praxicums”, required as of 2015, is “to respond to the principal critique that’s been levelled at legal education in recent years that it has not been doing a fantastic job of preparing students for the reality of legal practice.” Praxicums will be credit courses that integrate theory with real-world client interaction at places like legal clinics, or classroom assignments that simulate what lawyers do day-to-day. Why the mix of simulation and placements? “The reality is there aren’t enough clinical opportunities, at the moment at least, for every student to deal with a real-life client,” said Stribopoulos in Maclean’s Sept. 25. Read full story.
Trust key element of training in modern charisma
At York University’s Schulich School of Business, an Art and Science of Leadership second-year elective has been offered for seven years. It’s specifically designed to discover and foster the emotional intelligence needed to be better leaders, among other qualitative attributes. The 12-week course was developed by Professor Hazel Rosin in the Department of Organizational Behaviour. There is a certain art to being a leader that isn’t necessarily innate, she explained in the Financial Post Sept. 23. “Lots of times people may have wonderful abilities of leadership, but don’t have the very basic knowledge of the science of leadership and human behavior.” Read full story.
Immersion goes beyond French
Research, including from Ellen Bialystok of the Department of Psychology at York University in Toronto, indicates learning more than one language at a young age can help develop skills for understanding different cultures, help in completing linguistic and non-linguistic tasks more efficiently, stimulate mental activity and enhance cognitive abilities, reported The Globe and Mail Sept. 26. Read full story.
Expert FAQ: What should investors know about equity crowdfunding?
Through his research, York University Professor Douglas Cumming has found that increased government regulation helps attract investors to equity crowdfunding. “In our recent paper based on Canadian survey data where equity crowdfunding is not permitted but nevertheless currently being contemplated, we found that some entrepreneurs and potential portals had a preference for more lax regulation, while investors preferred more stringent regulation along with steps to better inform and educate investors,” Cumming said in NerdWallet Investing Sept. 23 “In view of the global online marketplace and the ability of investors to move capital to the jurisdiction that best suits their interests, the data in our paper is consistent with the view crowdfunding markets will flourish where there is a better set of regulations that meets investors’ demands and serves entrepreneurs’ and portals’ interests.” Read full story.