2009 marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of Queen’s Commerce program – Canada’s first undergraduate business degree. The Queen’s School of Business (QSB) Faculty Hall of Fame is being created to recognize the professors who most influenced the thousands of students who have earned their business degree at Queen’s.

The inaugural inductions will take place at the QSB Luncheon on Saturday, May 23, 2009 as part of Queen’s Spring Reunion Weekend festivities.

Nominations for this prestigious recognition program are now closed. 

Four Queen’s School of Business Commerce students have made it to the finals of Canada’s Next Top Ad Exec, a nation-wide competition for university marketing and advertising students.   The top ten teams include two from QSB: Commerce 2011 students Amy Fan and Nick Milinkovich and Commerce 2012 students Jacob Martin and Arielle Hancu. Participants are competing for an internship with Volkswagen, as well as the keys to a 2009 Volkswagen Routan. 

The competition, currently in its third year, offers students the opportunity to develop a real-world marketing campaign for the Routan, and was designed to help participants forge closer connections with business schools and executives within the marketing industry.   In the final round of competition each team will present its ideas to a panel of industry experts who will choose the top entry. The winning team will be announced on Tuesday, March 31 at The King Edward hotel in downtown Toronto.

Commerce student team Campus Connect took home top honours at the second annual Paul and Tom Kinnear Business Plan Competition held on February 26 at QSB.

Established in 2008 by Dr. Tom Kinnear, BCom’66, LLD’02, the competition awards the winning team $5,000 to the start-up or ongoing operations of their business. Dr. Kinnear is the Director of the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan and the founder of the Wolverine Venture Fund, the inspiration for QSB’s own student-advised Tricolour Venture Fund. “Each year QSB Commerce students are invited to submit their business plans to be judged in a preliminary round.  The final four present their plans to a panel of judges that selects the team that is most committed to pursuing the business”, explained Kelley Packalen, competition organizer and QSB Professor of Strategy and Organization.

This year’s judging panel included William White (BA’75, MBA’80), Director, W. White & Associates, Ltd.; Lisanne Hill (BCom’80), President, Contor Industries Ltd.; and Elspeth Murray, Associate Professor & Director – Queen’s Centre for Business Venturing (QCED/QCBV) and CIBC Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship.

Winning team Campus Connect was founded by BCom’09 students David Phillips and Ian MacDonald. The team also won the Queen’s Entrepreneurs Competition where they took home $6,000 and the opportunity to pitch their idea to the Dragons on the hit CBC show Dragon’s Den during the 2009 season.

For the second consecutive year, the Queen’s Commerce team won first place at the annual Mastercard Forepoint Case Competition. Hosted by the University of Alberta Marketing Association, the ForePoint Case Competition brings together 16 teams of business students from all four corners of Canada, allowing students the opportunity to perform extensive research on the appointed company, industry, and the featured product or service by distributing the case three weeks before the main competition event. This places a greater emphasis on case research, analysis, and preparation, which accurately reflects how most decisions are made in the business world.

Now in its fifth year the conference attracts national student participation. This year’s winning team from Queen’s School of Business included: Michael Brewer, Michael Koichopolos, Lauren Parker and Prasanna Ranganathan.

Accounting Professor Steve Salterio celebrates with Queen’s newest CA’s at the Chartered Accountants of Ontario awards ceremony.

Queen’s School of Business (QSB) graduates celebrated the completion of the annual Chartered Accountants’ Uniform Evaluation (UFE) exam at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto on February 21. The UFE is a three-day, national examination administered by Canada’s Chartered Accountants that qualifies university graduates for their chartered accountant (CA) designation after completing their term of service with a public accounting firm.

The reception coincided with the Chartered Accountants of Ontario Annual Convocation ceremony and CA dinner dance. QSB Professor George Boland said that this year’s group of forty-nine new CA’s is the largest number ever produced by Queen’s.

(From Left to Right) Finalist Gabriel Bran Lopez, host Alex Trebek, finalists Amy Robichaud, David Suk and Robert Marsh. Photo credit: Paul Couvrette.

23-year-old Robert Marsh, a BCom’07 graduate from Queen’s School of Business, has persevered through an intense boot camp and made the list of the top four ambitious young candidates to compete for the title of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, the top prize of $50,000 and an internship at Magna International next week on CBC-TV.
 
Host Alex Trebek will lead the four finalists as they are grilled by former prime ministers: Paul Martin, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell and Joe Clark.  

Marsh, originally from Dartmouth, N.S., told the Cape Breton Post that he’s always been interested in politics and felt the competition was a great opportunity to have his voice heard and get other young people interested in politics.

Watch to see who will be named Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister on March 18 at 9 p.m. on CBC.