Kingston, April 25, 2012 – Exterior scaffolding around the new wing of Goodes Hall is being removed in stages, exposing the finished sections beneath. Now visible are the floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a view of the common area and the three-storey airy expanse above. Work continues apace on the interior of the building as classrooms, meeting rooms, common areas and offices are well on their way to completion.

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On April 14th, 68 members of the graduating MBA class of 2012 pledged to lead with integrity and to use the knowledge and skills they acquired at Queen’s to create value for society.

“The Queen’s MBA Oath was initiated by last year’s graduating class, and we wanted to be sure to continue the tradition” commented Kenneth Chow, a member of the Student Executive Council that organized this year’s MBA Oath Ceremony. “We hope that the Oath will become a tradition with all future Queen’s MBA graduating classes”.

The Queen’s MBA Oath was developed as an adaptation of the MBA Oath Project, a movement started in 2009 at Harvard Business School with the mission “to facilitate the widespread movement of MBAs who aim to lead in the interests of the greater good and who commit to living out the principles articulated in the oath”. It is a voluntary pledge taken by graduating MBAs around the world.

The Queen’s MBA Oath ceremony took place prior to their graduating class dinner. The keynote address was delivered by Tania Carnegie, National Director of Community Leadership at KPMG, and a Visiting Executive at QSB’s Centre for Responsible Leadership.

Ms. Carnegie commended participants for taking the Oath, commenting that it is a grounding document which “signifies your recognition of the responsibility that comes with the privilege of leadership; that each one of us has an impact through our words and actions; and that our choices influence the behavior of others”.

Carnegie encouraged students to think about their own personal definition of success and how they can make a positive difference either through their own entrepreneurial pursuits or by being a ‘social intrapreneur’ within their organizations.

Participating students verbally pledged the Oath as a group and then signed a ledger which will be kept at Queen’s. Each also left with their own signed and framed copy of the Oath to serve as a visual reminder of the commitments they have made.

Scores of Commerce students donned white t-shirts and assembled on Tindall Field to be filmed from the air on April 3. This ‘Commerce Family Portrait’ was organized by Comm’12 students Katherine Wong Too Yen and Chengbo Qian on behalf of the Commerce Society. The daring aerial photographer was Ken Sekiguchi, Comm’14.

Kingston , March 29, 2012 - Jane Wu, BCom’12, and her teammates took home top honours at the annual Paul and Tom Kinnear Business Plan Competition held March 29 at Goodes Hall. Their venture, Penyo Pal, is an engaging game for “kids and kids at heart” to learn Mandarin.

Established in 2008 by Dr. Tom Kinnear, BCom’66, LLD’02, the competition awards the winning team $5,000 to launch or further the ongoing operations of its venture. 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, teams that comprise at least one QSB Commerce student submit their business plans. After a preliminary round, the final four teams present to a panel of judges that selects the winning team.

This year’s judging panel included Lauren Haw, BCom’07, Founder and Managing Realtor of HerHome.ca; Ahmad Iqbal, BCom’10, Founder of Atendy; Peter McWhirter, MBA’79, retired VP of Commercial Banking at TD; and Elspeth Murray, BSc’85, MBA’87, Associate Dean, Queen’s School of Business and Director of the Queen’s Centre for Business Venturing.

The winning team Penyo Pal was founded by BCom’12 student Jane Wu, Jessica Fan, Simon Fraser University, Business & Design 2012; Rafal Dittwald, University of Toronto Engineering 2012; and Ryan Wagner, University of Waterloo Engineering 2012. Its first Mandarin instruction product, now in beta development, is a virtual community where students can adopt a baby Kirin animated character and interact on a platform designed to foster language exposure and learning. Says Jane, “We believe learning a language is the best way to discover the world so we’re excited to be leveraging technology to make learning Mandarin fun for kids, and empowering for parents.”

New York City, March 27, 2012 – Dan McCann, BCom’11, and Amy Bergenwall, BCom’08, MSC’10, scored top honours in the international category of the NYC Next Idea Global Business Plan Competition. This annual competition, sponsored by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Columbia University’s School of Engineering, encourages innovative business ventures to launch and operate their businesses in New York City.

After narrowing the field of 270 applications down to six finalists, the International Track prize was awarded to Dan and Amy’s new venture Stylsize, a mobile and web app with a convenient solution for out-of-store and online apparel purchases. Their app will enable shoppers to visualize how garments fit and flatter their bodies without the frustrating guesswork associated with today’s online shopping.

The pair will receive $17,500 in cash prizes and six months of free office space in order to help them launch their business in New York City.

Inaugural speaker series event tied to The Monieson Centre’s new research theme ‘The Business of Healthcare’

Kingston, March 15, 2012 – Lessons the healthcare sector can learn from the business world was the topic addressed by Don Drummond, former Chief Economist for TD Bank and Chair of Ontario’s Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services. His presentation on March 15 drew a capacity crowd of students, faculty and staff to the Goodes Hall event.

Having recently made over 100 recommendations on healthcare reform to the provincial government, Mr. Drummond reflected, “I think we need to have an honest assessment of the healthcare system. It dramatically needs an overhaul.”

Citing an aging population and rising healthcare costs that see Canada spending in excess of 30% more per capita than the average Western nation, Mr. Drummond argued in favour of finding new ways to organize the country’s healthcare system. “We are not running the healthcare system efficiently; we are spending more than we need to spend,” he said.

While healthcare spending needs to be better managed, the solution, he emphasized, is not the drastic cuts seen in Ontario in the 1990s. An integrative approach to healthcare that focuses on quality of care, instead of quantity of services performed, is the key to improving the end results of healthcare investment, he said.

The presentation launched The Monieson Centre’s new research theme that explores the ‘Business of Healthcare’. According to Centre Director Dr. Scott Carson, “The Business of Healthcare is related both to the role that management processes can play in healthcare delivery, and what business innovation and discovery can contribute to the quality of patient care.”

Driven by collaboration, the Centre engages researchers from business, health sciences, applied sciences, policy studies and other related disciplines, to create breakthrough knowledge at the intersection of business and public policy. The Business of Healthcare theme continues the Centre’s tradition of linking academics, business leaders and policymakers to develop research-based solutions to real-world questions. The ultimate goal, Dr. Carson noted, is “to link ideas to action,” through dissemination of research in top-tier academic journals and at conferences, as well as by hosting industry-oriented speaker series, summits and events.

The Monieson Centre at Queen’s School of Business was established in November 1998 with generous funding from Melvin R. Goodes (former Chairman and CEO of Warner-Lambert). The Centre is named for Dr. David (Danny) Monieson, an emeritus faculty member renowned for inspirational teaching and leadership at Queen’s School of Business.

The winners: Saumya Baunthiyal, Gleb Nikitashenko, Viraj Gupta and Siddharth Banerjee.

Montreal, March 17, 2012 - A team of four Queen’s MBA students captured first place honours and the $4,000 top prize at a case competition on business and sustainability held as part of the Montreal Sustainability Weekend on March 17. The Weekend, organized by McGill and Concordia Universities and HEC Montreal, attracted 11 teams from Canada, the US and Denmark.

The QSB students successfully presented their case on the entry of Alcoa, the world’s leading producer of primary aluminum, into Saudia Arabia and the social, environmental and economic impacts of such a move.

New research from Queen’s School of Business reveals that nearly 6 out of ten working Canadians are exposed to workplace harassment – and the culprits are often women

KINGSTON, ON, March 21, 2012 – The celebrated series Mad Men, which portrays the 1960s world of advertising, is about to enter into its much anticipated fifth season. And while protagonist Don Draper’s offside behaviour towards women in the office is widely regarded as an approach of days gone by, a recent Leger Marketing poll commissioned by Queen’s School of Business reveals that workplace harassment is still very much a part of the modern day office environment with 57 per cent of working Canadians having experienced or witnessed workplace harassment.

But what does harassment look like in today’s workplace? Queen’s School of Business professor and expert in organizational behavior, Jana Raver says inappropriate ‘love taps’ and coerced office affairs, like those portrayed on the popular show, aren’t the only acts constituting today’s harassment behaviours; harassment can take a variety of insidious forms that are sometimes difficult to identify.

“While we no longer smoke and drink in the office like the characters from Mad Men, Don Draper’s style of workplace harassment is still alive and well in 2012,” says Dr. Jana Raver, Associate Professor at Queen’s School of Business. “Many offenders rationalize their actions as harmless, but this isn’t a TV show that ends in 60 minutes — it’s real life, and a single incident of harassment can cause long-lasting suffering for the victim.”

She says gender dynamics play a role, but not strictly in the male versus female way that many of us may think.

While men are disproportionately identified as the culprits with half of the harassment inflicted solely by them, according to Jana, today’s office bully might very well be “Dawn Draper.” When women experience harassment (personally or witness to it), they are twice as likely as men to report that it came from another woman (30 per cent vs. 15 per cent of men).

The study also found that women are more likely to reveal they have personally experienced harassment (33 per cent vs. 26 per cent of men).

“Today’s workplace bully can be male or female, but while men tend to bully both women and men equally, female bullies tend to disproportionately choose other female colleagues as targets,” says Raver. “And contrary to stereotypes of bullies preying on the weak for power, most targets of bullying in the office — regardless of gender — tend to be the average and above-average performers.”

Queen’s Commerce students descended on Jinotepe, Nicaragua, during Reading Week in late February to volunteer their services to help renovate a local school. Students restored a water fountain, built a new play area, painted the school’s interior and exterior and created educational murals for the 185 elementary school students at the Carlos José Salinas Elementary School in Jinotepe, outside Managua. While the students paid their own expenses, they also raised funds to bring nearly $400 worth of school supplies and delivered 50 teddy bears collected by students of Bluevale Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, ON.

The 25 students were chosen as part of the Queen’s Commerce Initiative Abroad (Q’CIA), an annual international volunteer initiative that targets a different country in the developing world. This year’s group partnered with Basecamp International Centers, a not-for-profit organization that offers short duration volunteer placements that benefit deserving schools abroad. Q’CIA, established in 2009, operates under the auspices of the Queen’s Commerce Society, the undergraduate student government for Commerce students enrolled in Queen’s School of Business.

RBC judges Avi Pollock, VP Innovation (far left) and Morteza Mahjour, Chief Information & Operations Officer (far right), flank Dream Builders team members Francesca Burdett-Coutts, Gleb Nikitashenko, Jonah Guo and Soumen Saha.

Toronto, ON — Three of the five finalist teams invited to attend RBC’s Next Great Innovator Challenge Gala on Feb. 23 in Toronto were comprised of Queen’s full-time MBA students. This is the first time in the Challenge’s six-year history that a QSB team has made it to the finals. QSB’s Dream Builders team nabbed second place honours and a $10K prize, while the Goodes Hall Warriors and ToRC teams each received a $5K prize. Finalists also scored interviews with RBC and media training to assist them in handling media enquiries.