February 2024

Dear colleagues,

February was another action-packed month. I’m sure everyone saw Graham Carr’s message to the community about our university’s legal challenge to the Quebec government concerning the tuition hikes.

I want to thank everyone for their commitment to our students and to fulfilling our mission to provide an engaging learning and research environment that empowers us to achieve our greatest potential. I believe we are moving in the right direction as a university and I’m confident we can weather this storm.

Open House and admissions

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Open House on Saturday, February 17. This one-on-one interaction is a great opportunity to emphasize our strengths and our important place in the Montreal business community.

Every effort made in recruiting students matters. Besides letting potential candidates know how great our School is, the support we provide them once they have decided to apply is also very critical. This last month was particularly busy for the members of our graduate admission unit led by Cynthia Law. I want to acknowledge and thank them for their work during this intensive period, as well as each GPD and everyone involved in assessing students’ files - each of you play an important role during this crucial time. I am pleased to report that the research programs have surpassed their number of applications and admissions compared to last year. Let’s hope that the accepted students will join us.

Celebrating our success

In our last newsletter, I asked that you reach out about your recent successes so we can share them here. It can be easy to get caught up in our tasks and I don’t want us to lose sight of all that we’ve achieved and how far we’ve come. And on that note, here are some successes to celebrate!

We have maintained our parity certification discerned by Women in Governance. In 2019, we were the first and only business school in Canada to have received this recognition and we have kept it since then. It speaks to our engagement towards becoming more inclusive and providing a greater sense of belonging. Thanks to the Accreditation and Faculty Relations team with a special thanks to Amalia Dinut.

Congratulations to Zeynep Arsel on being selected as the 2023 recipient of the Concordia University Award for Graduate Mentoring. This award recognizes a faculty member for their leadership in mentoring graduate students. Zeynep has also been nominated as our university’s candidate for the Geoffrey Marshal Award and the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies’ (CAGS) Dr. Suning Wang Award for Outstanding Graduate Mentorship. Thank you for your commitment to our students’ success!

Congratulations to Adriane MacDonald on receiving seed funding for her project, “Towards a Carbon Governance Living Lab: Designing and Testing Local Decarbonization Governance Experiments,” from Volt-age.

You may have seen media coverage last month of one of our students, Nicolas Bergeron, a double major in Accountancy (Co-Op) and Management. He organized a Concordia Pride Game on February 3 and 4 for 2SLGBTQIA+ players and community members to share a safe and supportive space before the hockey games. We are proud of Nicolas for embodying our School's core value of inclusiveness and for fostering a sense of belonging and engagement.

End of February means a lot of case competitions

John Molson Undergraduate Case Competition: JMUCC, which is the largest international undergraduate case competition organized by a committee of JMSB students, happened during Reading Week. For the first time in nine years, our own competing team reached the podium. Again, thanks to the organizing committee for such a successful event that helps our reputation, and congratulations to the delegates and coaches for winning third place. Special kudos to Nora Baronian as the program director of JMCC.

ENGCOMM: This event wrapped up its 11th edition on February 24. I’m proud of this cross-faculty case competition and am pleased that it continues to build meaningful connections between our students in business and engineering while opening their eyes to the many ways these two disciplines intersect. Congratulations to the ENGCOMM executive team and organizing committee, with Mary Perri as our JMSB representative.

MBA Case Competition Committee: MBA students participating in the Asper Business Case Competition from Feb 21 – 24 placed first for the research case, second in the boardroom case and third in the final round for their division. The JMSB team also advanced to the finals at the Annual Fisher Invitational Case Competition at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University that was held in early February. Bravo to the students and coaches, especially Tim Field!

Internal events

The JMSB Social Committee held its first Valentine’s Day Bake Off with great success! I was told the desserts were beautifully presented and the quality was outstanding. A big thank you to the bakers Salvatore Colavita, Sue Davis, Amalia Dinut, Will Falcao, Alexandra Karnezis, Samantha Hamer, Valentina Mennella, Murielle Salari, Matthaus Tekathen, Carla Tittley-Rene and Kiara (Valentina’s daughter). Congratulations to Sue Davis (1st place), Salvatore Colavita (2nd place) and Alexandra Karnezis (3rd place) and thank you to the judges: Jordan LeBel, Oliver de Volpi (from Hospitality) and Barbara Henchey.

The MB lobby was filled with music on Thursday, February 22 thanks to a new collaboration between the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee (Learning) and the Department of Music, Faculty of Fine Arts. The EDIBC (L) committee is made up of students, faculty and staff and its mandate is to improve the teaching and learning environment.

I hope to see everyone at our next Faculty event where we can take a moment to connect and enjoy each other’s company. The 2024 Dean’s Spring Celebration and cabane à sucre buffet lunch will take place on Tuesday, March 19th from 12 – 1:30 p.m. in MB 10.121. Please RSVP by clicking here before Friday, March 8th.

Closing remarks

Many great things are happening at JMSB. I’m very grateful for everyone’s engagement in their own activities and with their colleagues. Lots of impactful research is happening and our students enjoy their learning environment thanks to our knowledgeable and experienced instructors. Despite the difficult situation, we keep making progress on many fronts. I’m proud of our community for finding ways to engage with each other and for your commitment to supporting our mission.

And as indicated before, one of our overarching pursuits is to celebrate and share JMSB successes. To that end, please contact Taylor Tower, Communications Manager, at taylor.tower@concordia.ca with details about recent successes – your own, your students’, your colleagues' – so we can continue to shine a light on our strengths.

#WeAreJMSB

Take care,

Anne-Marie Croteau, PhD, CDir
Dean