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Trent's Business Program Ranked Second Overall by Corporate Knights Magazine

Business Administration Program Ranked First in Course Offerings Survey

Corporate Knights, Canada's magazine for responsible business, has ranked Trent University's Business Administration program second overall in their annual ranking of Canadian undergraduate business schools.

The 2006 Knight School Guide, published in the July issue of Corporate Knights magazine, surveyed and evaluated 46 undergraduate business programs across Canada. The annual ranking, now in its third year, aims to highlight which schools are the best at infusing social and environmental elements into the student experience. The report is also touted as "a guide to business schools for students who want to change the world". In the first year of the survey, Trent ranked second among primarily undergraduate schools. Last year, Trent's program ranked first overall.

"It is very gratifying to have Trent consistently selected by the Corporate Knights survey as a leader among Canada's undergraduate business programs," said Asaf Zohar, an Associate Professor in the Business Administration department at Trent University. "Infusing our students with social and environmental awareness and leadership skills is a pillar of our business program. We are honoured to be once again identified as leaders in a dimension of management education that is highly valued by Trent's traditions and university culture."

Criteria used to rate the schools included course work, student initiatives, and institutional activities ranging from speaker series to financial awards. Trent's program ranked first in the course offerings category, which evaluated schools according to their curriculum offerings of core courses, elective courses, joint degrees and specializations or concentrations dedicated to or dealing with social and environmental impact management. The top three ranked undergraduate business schools were York University, Trent University, and the University of Calgary.

"We are at a critical point in time in the annals of management education. There is a huge turning point in organizations away from the economic bottom line as sole driver to embracing a wider bottom line that includes the social and environmental aspects - I think this is born of crisis. We do not have enough managers or leaders that are successfully capitalizing on synergies between economic, social, and environmental aspects of organisational activities. We have to have a faculty-wide shared agenda to sustainability issues, it's a bold vision to structure an entire programme to deal with these issues that remain emergent in management education, not to mention management practice," wrote Professor Zohar, in the survey submitted by Trent to Corporate Knights.

Corporate Knights magazine also lists 13 honourable mentions of creative and intriguing best practices at Canada's business schools. Trent University holds a place on this list for its Green Ribbon Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility, which allows graduates to make a commitment to the pursuit of social and environmental responsibility in their work. In its first year (2004-2005), over 80 per cent of graduates took the Green Ribbon Pledge.

For the first time, the Corporate Knights annual ranking also included and evaluated 21 law schools and 36 engineering schools. According to Toby Heaps, Editor of Corporate Knights, the most striking finding of the survey was the breadth and number of student clubs that are dedicated to social and/or environmental issues, contrasted against the dearth of similarly-themed course offerings. "This gap suggests that student demand for sustainability education exceeds the present supply," he said. "Those schools at the vanguard are well-placed to entice the most interesting leaders of tomorrow."

For more details on the 2006 Knight School Guide, please visit www.corporateknights.ca/knightschools.

Posted June 29, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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