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This calls for modernized business education that brings the world into the classroom and offers innovative learning environments so that students gain in-demand expertise and leadership best practices, build their resilience and courage, and evolve their understanding of the critical issues facing business and society.

Ivey aspires to build on its legacy of real-world leadership education by continually innovating how it connects to students and delivers programs while keeping case-based teaching, experiential learning, and co-curricular engagement at the heart of its transformational experience.

A New Approach to Programs

To maximize our program delivery, we need to preserve what’s valuable in our current approach while embracing new processes and tools that allow us to respond to changing needs.

One of the biggest changes to Ivey’s program delivery was a program office restructuring that enabled us to create efficiencies and synergies and work across programs to solve common challenges while still maintaining our focus on excellence in each program. 

We have also realigned program timing to allow us to cross-list existing courses while continually creating new courses focused on the Ivey Next critical issues.

HBA students in the classroom

HBA students in the classroom

Progress highlights

Program office restructuring

In May 2023, Ivey’s four program offices for HBA, MSc/MM in Analytics, MBA/AMBA, and EMBA were consolidated and restructured into two new groups: Programs Operations and Student Experience. Each group had a new leader appointed, an Executive Director – Programs Operations to oversee the Programs Operations teams and a Director – Student Experience to oversee student advisory and support, student experience, and the international exchange portfolio.

The goal of the restructuring was to create consistency and an Ivey-wide approach across all programs and to ensure more care was placed on student experience, while preserving the excellence we had built in supporting individual programs. The restructuring also helps staff to better manage increasing responsibilities due to the growth of our programs since some processes can be streamlined or work shared. Since fall 2021, we’ve added two new sections to the HBA program as well as launched an MSc Digital Management stream, a Master of Management in Analytics, and a GDip in Sustainability in the MSc program and plans are underway for more program growth. We are already seeing some benefits from the restructuring. Below is a summary of our progress to date and upcoming plans.

Centralized operations
Resource sharing
Aligning MBA and MSc elective periods
Experiential learning support
Critical issues-focused programming

The restructuring has resulted in some processes becoming centralized, such as timetabling, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. Doing so has created a main point of contact, consistency in decision-making, and some efficiencies/improvements. For instance, centralized timetabling allows us to better manage the constraints of faculty time and facility availability.

Integrating program staff has created efficiencies from a resource standpoint. For example, thanks to “buddy” systems being created between certain programs, the program coordinators can share the workload during busy times. Coordination of program activities is also allowing us to approach vendors as Ivey rather than individual programs to capture economies of scale.

Aligning the elective periods in the MBA and MSc programs has allowed us to cross-list elective courses. This confers several benefits: more elective choice is available to students in each program and important, but niche electives, have a larger student potential audience to draw on.

Experiential learning is an important part of our students’ journey at Ivey. Over the past few years, the offerings have grown to include a wide variety of study trips, internships, global team internships, studio experiences, and Ivey Field Project courses. To address the growth and maximize the benefits of our experiential learning portfolio, we have consolidated our key support resources under one roof. Instead of having external vendors and faculty looking for client projects and a dispersed support function providing course delivery, we have created an experiential learning unit at Ivey consisting of dedicated Experiential Learning Coordinators and a Client Acquisition leader. This new team allows us to build up strong and sustainable client pipelines, place our clients with the best possible group of students and project format, and ensure all students, faculty, and clients receive a consistent, high quality experience.

Since the launch of Ivey Next, we have revamped program curriculum to include critical issues-focused courses. These new courses are on topics such as sustainability, social impact, Hustle and Grit, equity,  and artificial intelligence, and more offerings are in the works for next fall.  Equally as important, all current portfolios of courses are being continually renewed to explore/embed critical issues.

Centralized operations

The restructuring has resulted in some processes becoming centralized, such as timetabling, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. Doing so has created a main point of contact, consistency in decision-making, and some efficiencies/improvements. For instance, centralized timetabling allows us to better manage the constraints of faculty time and facility availability.

Resource sharing

Integrating program staff has created efficiencies from a resource standpoint. For example, thanks to “buddy” systems being created between certain programs, the program coordinators can share the workload during busy times. Coordination of program activities is also allowing us to approach vendors as Ivey rather than individual programs to capture economies of scale.

Aligning MBA and MSc elective periods

Aligning the elective periods in the MBA and MSc programs has allowed us to cross-list elective courses. This confers several benefits: more elective choice is available to students in each program and important, but niche electives, have a larger student potential audience to draw on.

Experiential learning support

Experiential learning is an important part of our students’ journey at Ivey. Over the past few years, the offerings have grown to include a wide variety of study trips, internships, global team internships, studio experiences, and Ivey Field Project courses. To address the growth and maximize the benefits of our experiential learning portfolio, we have consolidated our key support resources under one roof. Instead of having external vendors and faculty looking for client projects and a dispersed support function providing course delivery, we have created an experiential learning unit at Ivey consisting of dedicated Experiential Learning Coordinators and a Client Acquisition leader. This new team allows us to build up strong and sustainable client pipelines, place our clients with the best possible group of students and project format, and ensure all students, faculty, and clients receive a consistent, high quality experience.

Critical issues-focused programming

Since the launch of Ivey Next, we have revamped program curriculum to include critical issues-focused courses. These new courses are on topics such as sustainability, social impact, Hustle and Grit, equity,  and artificial intelligence, and more offerings are in the works for next fall.  Equally as important, all current portfolios of courses are being continually renewed to explore/embed critical issues.

What's next

Integration of CEMS across the MSc program

CEMS is one of our leading exchange programs at Ivey that is offered to our MSc, International Business students. Consisting of an alliance of 34 global leading business schools, it offers an opportunity to earn an additional Masters in Management Certificate through a collaboratively designed curriculum and accompanying exchanges. In 2024, the MSc program is pleased to offer CEMS to all three program streams of the MSc.

Critical issues-focused programming

Launch four additional critical issues-focused courses this fall. The new electives we anticipate launching in the 2025 academic year include: Breaking the Bias: Gender and Innovation, Digital Transformation, Sustainability Digital Studio, and AI Fundamentals for Business.

Faculty guide

The launch of a new online Faculty Guide in fall 2024. This site will serve as a key portal for faculty seeking a better understanding of Ivey programs’ policies and procedures, best practices, supports, key contacts, and much more. Consultation on the first draft is ongoing as well as finalizing the hosting format and search tools. If all goes well, it is hoped MS Co-pilot will be a guide for this guide.

Innovation sandbox

As digital technologies and analytics continue to expand across the business landscape, the need for an enhanced teaching tool has emerged. The MSc and MM programs are collaborating with their partners on the Information Technology team to create a secured virtual environment within the Learn (Canvas) platform that will allow faculty and students to safely interact with sensitive client data and expanded software tools so that projects can tackle deeper and more meaningful client issues.

Sense of belonging initiatives

Since we’ve brought the programs staff together in a new way, we are working on initiatives to enhance their working experience, learning opportunities, and deepen relationships/collaboration between staff members to increase the potential for knowledge-sharing, and staff-driven improvement ideas. These are great professional development opportunities for the team.

Cost-savings measures

Continue efforts to reduce costs for program events and services. Examples include:

  1. Staff and faculty travel savings by better aligning while-you-work program session dates in Toronto;
  2. Re-evaluation and trimming of while-you-work food and beverage options during residency weeks and Toronto sessions that are underutilized;
  3. Review of suppliers used across programs. Example: Reduction in orientation costs by adoption of a single vendor for our while-you-work and London-based team-building days across programs; and,
  4. Savings generated by the in-sourcing of Ivey Field Project client acquisition.

Ivey Career Management

Unlike some business schools where Career Management is a silo, Ivey’s Career Management is integrated into programming and the student journey. For instance, the Career Management Essentials (CME) course for first-year HBA students was recently overhauled and is now an integral part of the Learning Through Action (LTA) curriculum, starting with the September 2023 cohort.

In addition to developing progressive programming that ensures our students are differentiated in the market, efforts are being made to align this programming with Ivey Next. One example is the creation of a dedicated web portal, launched in January 2024, offering HBA, MSc, and MBA students opportunities to experience real-world challenges that might shift their career aspirations toward the critical issues. Since the launch, there have been 2,389 visits to the post-a-job section of the site, which is a 129-per-cent-increase versus a year ago, 199 employment reports have been downloaded, and users have engaged with the new videos 139 times.

Another example is the ongoing work to build EDI best practices into the programming and student/employer communications, which includes new photography that better showcases the diversity of the student body on the web portal. There will be a six-month review of the site to discuss further copy optimizations. In fall 2023, Career Management implemented a process for all Ivey recruiting partners to share information with students about their EDI initiatives, accomplishments, and recruiting practices using the career platform's Diversity Spotlight section. In addition, in February 2024, Career Management implemented new self-identification fields for students to opt in and complete as part of their candidate profile on the career platform. This data enables Career Management to share student information with employers to further their EDI recruitment strategies to attract candidates with diverse perspectives, experiences, and talents.

HBA students participating in O-Week activities

HBA students participating in O-Week activities

Improving the student experience

To continually enrich our student experience, we need to first understand what matters most to our community.

A big part of our work is taking a holistic approach to our student journey.  The program, called inspiring leaders, is underway to challenge us to always improve the student journey and outcomes.

Progress highlights

Enhanced student experience support
Inspiring Leaders at Ivey initiative
Work to understand our community

Created two new staff roles in 2023 to oversee student experience initiatives. The Director – Student Experience oversees student advisory and support, student experience, and the international exchange portfolio. The Senior Student Experience Associate provides support for student leadership, guides and facilitates enhancements to co-curricular onboarding for students and student leaders across Ivey programs, and collaborates on our mapping and continuous evaluation of the student journey.

In March 2024, we launched the initiative, Inspiring Leaders at Ivey: Connecting our Purpose with Experiences, which involves gaining insights from our community about the student experience and leveraging our existing data to map the current student journey. Work to date has included organizing discovery sessions with staff, faculty, students, and alumni to gain a better understanding of what makes our experience unique and where we are excelling as well as to identify opportunities to further innovate how we connect to students. In addition, we are collecting and analyzing data from Programs, Career Management, Recruitment, and Admissions as well as from the Sense of Belonging survey and the Ivey Values Sessions to assess what are common student interests and goals and where there could be more touchpoints. Next steps include reporting on preliminary insights; determining what we should be measuring, benchmarking, and prioritizing around student experience; and creating a student experience action plan.

As Ivey’s student body becomes more diverse, efforts are underway to better understand our community and create a welcoming and inclusive environment. One avenue is to assess whether additional pathways for connection or other supports are needed across the School and determine ways that faculty and staff can be involved with student-driven groups. To that end, the Director – Student Experience met with the University Pathways Program (UPP) students during their visit to Ivey last summer and asked them what they expect/need from their university experience. This knowledge will help us to support the UPP students who will be at Western University this fall, and may eventually come to Ivey, and to ensure we deliver on what we promise. Additional work is being done to gain a better understanding of the socioeconomic status of our student body to ensure supports are in place to reduce the risks of marginalization.

Enhanced student experience support

Created two new staff roles in 2023 to oversee student experience initiatives. The Director – Student Experience oversees student advisory and support, student experience, and the international exchange portfolio. The Senior Student Experience Associate provides support for student leadership, guides and facilitates enhancements to co-curricular onboarding for students and student leaders across Ivey programs, and collaborates on our mapping and continuous evaluation of the student journey.

Inspiring Leaders at Ivey initiative

In March 2024, we launched the initiative, Inspiring Leaders at Ivey: Connecting our Purpose with Experiences, which involves gaining insights from our community about the student experience and leveraging our existing data to map the current student journey. Work to date has included organizing discovery sessions with staff, faculty, students, and alumni to gain a better understanding of what makes our experience unique and where we are excelling as well as to identify opportunities to further innovate how we connect to students. In addition, we are collecting and analyzing data from Programs, Career Management, Recruitment, and Admissions as well as from the Sense of Belonging survey and the Ivey Values Sessions to assess what are common student interests and goals and where there could be more touchpoints. Next steps include reporting on preliminary insights; determining what we should be measuring, benchmarking, and prioritizing around student experience; and creating a student experience action plan.

Work to understand our community

As Ivey’s student body becomes more diverse, efforts are underway to better understand our community and create a welcoming and inclusive environment. One avenue is to assess whether additional pathways for connection or other supports are needed across the School and determine ways that faculty and staff can be involved with student-driven groups. To that end, the Director – Student Experience met with the University Pathways Program (UPP) students during their visit to Ivey last summer and asked them what they expect/need from their university experience. This knowledge will help us to support the UPP students who will be at Western University this fall, and may eventually come to Ivey, and to ensure we deliver on what we promise. Additional work is being done to gain a better understanding of the socioeconomic status of our student body to ensure supports are in place to reduce the risks of marginalization.

What's next

Student Experience Action Plan

Take the learnings from the Inspiring Leaders initiative to determine what we will implement and what are our aspirations, which will inform a Student Experience Action Plan. The Action Plan will identify specific targets, timelines, and responsibilities for creating a holistic approach to touchpoints across the student journey. Expected release is June 2024.

Expand pathways for connection

Determine what experiences and pathways for connection would best support Ivey’s student body, as well as how they should be governed, and then work with the students to build these experiences. We are also nurturing the growth of Ivey Pride and the Black Students at Ivey Collective by providing dedicated funding from Student Experience and opening the groups to all students at Ivey. We are developing the framework for a launch in September with new cohorts to be invited at their time of joining Ivey.

Improved HBA1 support meetings

Starting this summer, the academic advisors will meet one-on-one with each HBA1 student to answer any questions prior to the students arriving at Ivey. Having a greater understanding for each student will allow for a more personalized and effective onboarding to the Ivey experience. It will enable the intentional design of proactive supports and earlier engagement for these students.

Group workshops

Offer additional workshops to students on topics such as stress and resilience management and how to balance recruiting and the academic experience.

Transition to the Ivey Alumni Network

Work with Ivey Alumni Relations to offer support and celebratory initiatives as students transition to alumni, particularly in the period immediately after program completion and leading into convocation.

Ivey’s Teaching Scholars l-r: – Mazi Raz, Tiffany Bayley, Karen MacMillan, and Kyle Maclean

Ivey’s Teaching Scholars l-r: – Mazi Raz, Tiffany Bayley, Karen MacMillan, and Kyle Maclean

Transforming classrooms into innovative learning spaces

It’s not enough just to focus on the here and now, we need to develop learning experiences for the future.

Through our new John F. Wood Centre for Innovation in Business Learning (Wood Centre) led by Zoe Kinias, we are working on teaching innovations and ways to integrate technology and inclusive practices to help create the future of business education.

Teaching Scholars
Virtual reality project
Curriculum for EDI learning

In 2022, four Ivey professors received a new teaching scholar appointment at Western University, which means they are researching ways to enhance student learning as well as mentoring their colleagues in moving forward with new teaching tools and approaches. Ivey’s teaching scholars include:

  • Tiffany Bayley, who investigates how different techniques and formats, such as gaming elements and blended learning, can help students to better understand complex and technically difficult material, and also brings together Ivey faculty to learn from each other;
  • Kyle Maclean, HBA ’12, PhD ’17, who has developed a plagiarism check for Excel and is creating with software engineers a prototype of a tech solution for inclusive student contribution management;
  • Karen MacMillan, PhD ’13, who creates teaching cases and interactive experiences to improve learning experiences for students and faculty; and,
  • Mazi Raz, MBA ’05, PhD ’14, who explores processes for students to develop metacognitive skills at the intersection of imagination, creativity, and complexity for theories of change.

The Wood Centre is providing ongoing support of Ivey’s teaching scholars.

Ongoing work on a project called VR4EDI, which looks at how virtual reality can be used to build skills for inclusive educational and workspaces. The project is funded through the Critical Issues Challenge Fund and includes Shannon Rawski, Barnini Bhatacharyya, Lucas Monzani, Karen MacMillan, Zoe Kinias, Joshua Foster, Tiffany Bayley, and Erin Huner.

The Wood Centre contributed to two conferences focused on understanding EDI practices. One was the Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Conference held at Columbia Business School in New York in May 2023, created by Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, MIT Sloan, and Ivey. The event focused on sharing materials and resources for teaching EDI.

The second was the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston in August 2023. The Wood Centre co-developed a half-day professional development workshop for educators on how to teach EDI topics.

Teaching Scholars

In 2022, four Ivey professors received a new teaching scholar appointment at Western University, which means they are researching ways to enhance student learning as well as mentoring their colleagues in moving forward with new teaching tools and approaches. Ivey’s teaching scholars include:

  • Tiffany Bayley, who investigates how different techniques and formats, such as gaming elements and blended learning, can help students to better understand complex and technically difficult material, and also brings together Ivey faculty to learn from each other;
  • Kyle Maclean, HBA ’12, PhD ’17, who has developed a plagiarism check for Excel and is creating with software engineers a prototype of a tech solution for inclusive student contribution management;
  • Karen MacMillan, PhD ’13, who creates teaching cases and interactive experiences to improve learning experiences for students and faculty; and,
  • Mazi Raz, MBA ’05, PhD ’14, who explores processes for students to develop metacognitive skills at the intersection of imagination, creativity, and complexity for theories of change.

The Wood Centre is providing ongoing support of Ivey’s teaching scholars.

Virtual reality project

Ongoing work on a project called VR4EDI, which looks at how virtual reality can be used to build skills for inclusive educational and workspaces. The project is funded through the Critical Issues Challenge Fund and includes Shannon Rawski, Barnini Bhatacharyya, Lucas Monzani, Karen MacMillan, Zoe Kinias, Joshua Foster, Tiffany Bayley, and Erin Huner.

Curriculum for EDI learning

The Wood Centre contributed to two conferences focused on understanding EDI practices. One was the Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Conference held at Columbia Business School in New York in May 2023, created by Harvard Business School, Columbia Business School, MIT Sloan, and Ivey. The event focused on sharing materials and resources for teaching EDI.

The second was the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Boston in August 2023. The Wood Centre co-developed a half-day professional development workshop for educators on how to teach EDI topics.

What's next

Inaugural Wood Centre Symposium

Holding the first annual Wood Centre Symposium at Ivey’s Donald K. Johnson Centre in Toronto on May 23. This year’s Symposium will bring together educators, researchers, and executives actively working on Ivey’s critical issues with a focus on the evolution of work with respect to EDI. The event will focus on learning experiences in academic and corporate spaces and showcase Ivey’s innovations, including the Values Studios and Ivey’s virtual reality project led by Shannon Rawski. It will also include a presentation from Columbia Business School professor Modupe Akinola, and opportunities for those who innovate in this space to immerse themselves for co-creation and future collaborations.

Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Conference

Hosting the Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Conference at Ivey’s Donald K. Johnson Centre in Toronto May 21-22, which will bring together professors from leading universities to share materials and practices for teaching EDI.

Virtual learning experience with the Future of Management Education (FOME) Alliance

Co-creating a pilot virtual learning experience with the FOME Alliance called Crisis Management for potential use with Western University’s Business Foundations students.

Digital Learning Experiences

In April 2023, Ivey Publishing launched a series of Digital Learning Experiences (DLEs), which are digitally enhanced cases or courses that include multimedia-rich materials to enhance classroom engagement and learning outcomes. Some of our DLEs are already being used in the Ivey classroom (Examples: Sam’s Pizzeria in HBA, and Learning With Cases in AMBA and MSc) and we are encouraging faculty to develop and use them when possible. To date, 13 DLEs have been published and an additional 10 are in development. Ivey Publishing has also formed a strategic partnership with ESMT (European School of Management and Technology) to publish its DLEs, therefore expanding our digital learning offerings and allowing us to cater to diverse learning styles and topics.

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