The 2011 ComputerWorld Canada IT Leadership Award recipients were celebrated on Oct. 26 in Toronto. Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Management Information Systems James McKeen was named IT Educator of the Year, while MBA’07 alum Kalyan Chakravarthy took top honours as IT Manager of the Year for Small and Medium-sized enterprises.
Prof. McKeen was cited for his contributions in co-founding two industry forums connecting leaders in the industry to discuss critical IT issues, in bringing IT research into the classroom and linking graduate students with business leaders.
Kalyan Chakravarthy, Director of IT for the Toronto International Film Festival, was recognized for his contributions in moving the festival’s email platform into the cloud and ensuring a smooth transition of IT services when the festival moved to its new home at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in 2010.
Students in front of a wind turbine blade
The view from the Kingston waterfront has been transformed since the 2009 completion of the Wolfe Island wind farm. Its 86 giant turbines dominate the skyline and greatly impressed members of the MBA Energy and Industry Club during their tour of Canada’s second largest wind farm on Sept. 24. “It’s almost impossible to describe the immensity of the turbines and blades,” says Club President Christina Waters, MBA’12. “They have to be seen in person to fully appreciate their impressive dimensions.”
The visit was part of a full day of activities focused on wind energy and entrepreneurship. The morning session kicked off with a presentation by Samit Sharma, MBA’02, founder and Projects Director of Kingston-based Gaia Power. As an MBA student, Samit devised the Wolfe Island Wind Farm concept for his new ventures project which won that year’s new venture competition. Following graduation, he formed Gaia Power and began working on translating his concept into a viable business.
Samit’s passionate presentation focused on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and how an MBA can position graduates for a career in green energy. Next up was a trip by ferry to Wolfe Island for a site visit led by Mike Javelonciky of TransAlta, the owner/operator of the wind farm. “The site visit provided an excellent opportunity for our members to understand the massive scale and planning required for large energy projects.” Many club members were inspired by the visit and are now considering careers in the energy sector.
Kent Campbell (MBA’96), Deputy Minister, Saskatchewan Ministry of Energy and Resources, received one of the country’s most distinguished awards for outstanding citizenship: Canada’s Top 40 Under 40™ award in Toronto on June 8.
He is among 40 Canadians from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors recognized for their vision and leadership; innovation and achievement; impact; community involvement and contribution; and strategy for growth.
Now in its 15th year, the program is managed by founding sponsor, The Caldwell Partners International, with an independent advisory board composed of 25 business leaders.
Profs Moore, Free, Busch, Kissick and McConomy chosen by grads
Professors McConomy and Kissick with Commerce ’2010 grads at the May 31 Convocation
Professors Moore and Free with Executive MBA (National and Ottawa classes) and Cornell-Queen’s Executive MBA grads at the May 27 Convocation. (Professor Marc Busch was unable to attend.)
KINGSTON, ON – QSB’s Teaching Excellence Awards were voted by the graduating classes of 2010 and presented at end-of-year celebrations held by the various programs.
David McConomy, Assistant Professor in Accounting, received the Comm’89 Professor-Student Life Award for having made the greatest contribution to the graduating class over their four years in the Commerce Program. The Commerce Society Teaching Excellence Award was presented to Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Business Law, Associate Professor Peter Kissick.
The award for Teaching Excellence in the full-time MBA Program was presented to John Moore, Assistant Professor of Accounting, at a pre-convocation reception at Goodes Hall. Marc Busch, a professor of International Business at Georgetown University, was recognized for his teaching excellence by the graduating classes of both the Cornell-Queen’s Executive MBA and the Accelerated MBA for Business Graduates. Clinton Free, Associate Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Accounting, was the recipient of the Teaching Excellence Awards presented by both the National and Ottawa Executive MBA Programs.
Dean David Saunders, the Honourable Peter Milliken, House of Commons Speaker and Kingston MP, The Right Honourable Paul Martin, and Queen’s Chancellor David Dodge
Kingston, ON – In a mix of old and new, historic Grant Hall and the new Athletics and Recreation Centre (ARC) hosted convocation ceremonies for nearly 690 proud Queen’s School of Business graduates and their families on May 27, 28 and 31.
Former Prime Minister Paul Martin received an Honorary Doctorate and gave the Convocation address at the ceremony for full-time MBA, Accelerated MBA for Business Graduates, and Master of Management programs on May 28. In his remarks, he challenged the new graduates to exercise their judgment and do the right thing when faced with practices that challenge their sense of right or wrong. “If you are asked to push the envelope past where you believe you should, remember there is no asset you will ever possess that is greater than your own integrity and your reputation.” Click here to view his complete address.
Don Bayne, (BA’66, LLB’69, LLM’74, EMBA’01) delivered the Convocation address at the ceremony for graduates of the Executive and Cornell-Queens MBA programs. He highlighted the lasting effects of the many lessons he learned in the MBA program and encouraged the graduates to make the most of opportunities that often present themselves during turbulent economic times. Click here to view his complete address.
David Sculthorpe, BCom’83 and past Chair of the School’s Advisory Board, spoke at the ceremony for Commerce graduates and offered examples of some of the life-changing decisions that he has had made that didn’t always follow the conventional wisdom. Click here to view his complete address.
The new gymnasium at the ARC and the Biosciences Complex hosted post-ceremony celebrations where family, friends and graduates celebrated and bid a fond farewell to faculty, staff and classmates.
Congratulations to all graduates – the newest members of the Queen’s School of Business alumni family.
Suanne Nielsen, Senior VP & CAO, Foresters Insurance with Focus 2040 winner Sandeep Achar.
With graduation looming and final assignments due, MBA’2010 student Sandeep Achar looked beyond his immediate future to imagine what the world of work will be like in 2040. Along with Commerce student Dylan Dilecce, BCom’13, Sandeep participated in Focus 2040, a competition jointly organized by The Strategic Capability Network (SCNetwork), a national association of senior HR executives and practitioners, and McMaster University’s DeGroote School Of Business.
Sandeep captured the top prize – a six-month paid internship as a member of the HR consulting team at Foresters Insurance in Toronto. His presentations envisaged disaggregated workplaces made possible by technology that will make physical office spaces almost redundant, ‘Swat teams’ of like-minded skilled workers offering their expertise for hire, and artificial intelligence advances producing robotic and ‘bio-bot’ (part human, part machine) coworkers. Challenges HR managers will face will include “tackling diversity on different dimensions: between humans and robots, between cultures, nationalities and religions,” he predicts.
Sandeep came out on top of the three-phase competition by first submitting a 750-word entry describing the worker of 2040, followed by a 1500-word submission that described the workplace and work environment of the future. These two submissions impressed the judges – a panel of academics and HR experts – who chose him, along with eight other business students from across Canada, to present his vision at the finals held in Hamilton on March 23.
Before judges and spectators, Sandeep and the other finalists presented their vision of how the workplace of 2040 will operate, and included their proposed organizational models designed to effectively engage the workers of tomorrow.
Sandeep and the second and third-place finishers, Vanya Grover and Viva Nsair, both MBA students at DeGroote, will reprise their winning presentations at an event hosted by the Human Resources Planning Society, at Toronto’s National Club on May 6. Click here for more information.
KINGSTON, ON, – To combat the misperception that Canada lags behind other world leaders when it comes to innovation, MBA students at Queen’s School of Business have designed an Innovation Summit to be held in Kingston, ON, on March 20, 2010.
The first event of its kind in Canada, the student-organized Innovation Summit brings together thought leaders on innovation and creativity from leading companies, institutions and think tanks across North America to discuss the best way to use innovation to create sustainable competitive advantage.
“Canada does have extensive innovative and creative capacity waiting to be tapped,” said Jameel Lalji, MBA’10 and Chair of the Innovation Summit. “We just need to do more to support and enhance it, and that is exactly where the Innovation Summit can help.”
Today innovation is a key component of business strategy. Summit participants will learn how to build innovation capacity through out-of-the-box thinking and by adopting an enterprise-wide innovative culture. Participants will also learn how successful innovation can boost competitiveness, increase productivity, lower costs and increase benefits of a project or a strategic initiative regardless of size of company or industry.
The Summit offers three streams – The Concept of Innovation (Theories and Perspectives), Building Innovation Capacity, and Managing Innovation & Innovation Success Stories – as well as sixteen speakers, seven panelists and three moderators, all of whom are innovators in their fields. Selected sessions will center on how to strategically support innovation through public-private partnership investment and research.
Event organizers are marketing the event to business and government leaders, graduate students, alumni and undergraduates in the faculties of Commerce, Law, Engineering and Policy Studies. For more information on the Innovation Summit or to register, please visit www.qsbis.com.
A team of MBA 2010 students at the Emerging Markets Competition (l to r): Chris Doucet, Hein Le, Roger D’Sa, Anna Noir, Rahul Hari
A full day student competition at Queen’s School of Business lead by Dr. David Detomasi involved students from three International QSB Business courses looking at Canada and emerging markets. This event offered the 190 students involved the opportunity to network with alumni, faculty and members of both the local and national business communities while the esteemed judges including locals such as Robert Lee, Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets, David Yake, Sr. Executive, DuPont and Jack Julian, Advisor, Queen’s School of Business were witness to program innovations in QSB’s Bachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Administration and Master of Global Management programs. Students were broken out into 30 teams where four finalist judges awarded the winning team of Commerce students including: Rachel Zimmer, Chris Henry, Bernardo Ferreira, Matt Sinclair and Patricia Brecha a $300.00 travel gift certificate from P&G Travel for each student.
The Toronto Consulting Club at Queen’s School of Business has enjoyed a successful first year bringing together Toronto alumni and MBA students interested in the consulting field. Founder, Monica Porteanu, Cornell-Queen’s MBA’08, worked with fellow alumni Nadia Nzabi, AMBA’09, Raluca Petrut, AMBA’09, and Diana Campoli, EMBA’09, to organize a series of events last fall with speakers from top consulting firms, including AT Kearney, the Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada, and Secor Group.
More recent events have focused on current market conditions, with topics such as ‘Consulting during a Recession’, a panel discussion led by Prof. Douglas Reid. This past month the Toronto Consulting Club partnered with Deloitte for a roundtable event on ‘Perspectives on Consulting’ that included Deloitte Partners Gord Sandford and Tim Christmann. For more information or to get involved, contact torontoconsultingclub@queensbusiness.ca.
(l to r): Nexen representative Brittney Price, winning MBA team members Roger Paterson, Sooyen Ahn, Sal Thomas, Kiran Manjunath, Dr. Tina Dacin and Nexen representative Darcie Park
Business ethics and corporate social responsibility took centre stage at the 5th CSR Weekend presented by the Centre for Responsible Leadership from October 29-31. The annual QSB event, held at Goodes Hall, is designed to expose Commerce students to the issues and strategies behind socially responsible decision-making with a unique curriculum delivered through lectures, simulation exercises and a several case competitions. An exciting addition to this year’s event was the 1st Annual MBA Case Competition & CSR Day.
The weekend began with opening remarks from Dr. Tina Dacin, Director of the Centre for Responsible Leadership, and featured a keynote address from Chuck Gallagher, a former Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and corporate executive who was convicted of tax evasion and embezzlement. Mr. Gallagher’s powerful address touched on the difficult consequences resulting from his personal choices and the ramifications of unethical behaviour in the workplace.
The judging panel for the case competitions was comprised of industry representatives from companies such as Molson and Nexen, both leaders in the corporate social responsibility movement and event sponsors, Telus, Grand & Toy, Tim Horton’s Inc. and the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area.
Judge Paul Klein, president of Impakt Corporation, a Toronto-based company that helps corporations increase the returns on their community investments, noted on his blog on canadianbusiness.com: “The judges were very impressed by the degree to which the teams understood the still-emerging discipline of corporate social responsibility, recognized the challenges for corporations with oil sands operations, and had developed creative approaches to help mitigate environmental impact and maximize business value.”
Queen’s Commerce students have the option to earn a certificate in Corporate Social Responsibility during their four years of study. Full participation in three annual CSR weekend events is one key component needed to earn the certificate.
The CSR Weekend closed with the much anticipated announcement of the case competition winning teams, who received donations ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 for their charity of choice courtesy of event sponsor Nexen. A total of $13,000 was given to ten charities.
To read more about the CSR weekend, visit Commerce student Sheila Pan’s blog posting.