Reflecting back and looking forward

At the start of 2019, Strathclyde Business school Executive Dean Professor David Hillier reflects back on the achievements of 2018 and looks forward to 2019.

It’s been another great year at Strathclyde Business School and there’s been a lot to be proud of in terms of our staff, students and alumni. I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight a few of these.

Awards

First of all I’m delighted to share some award successes with you – two of the most recent being the Bronze Athena SWAN Award in recognition of our work in progressing equality within the business school, and the Outstanding Contribution to Scottish HR award which was presented to us at the annual HR Network Award in November.

We are thrilled to be recognised for our commitment to addressing gender equality and removing barriers to progression.

We were equally thrilled to be recognised for our longstanding and sustained contribution to the Scottish HR profession. And we were doubly pleased when MSc in International Human Resource Management student Veronika Gruber was named HR Graduate of the Year 2018 at the same award ceremony. Just one of the many successes for our talented student body.

We were also reaccredited by EQUIS earlier this year for the maximum five year period. As usual, to achieve this, we are visited by a team of Deans from accredited schools who put us through a rigorous review process which assesses the business school against stringent international criteria and our reaccreditation ensures we are still a triple accredited school.

Programmes

Early in 2018 we announced that Scotland’s next generation of business leaders would benefit from entrepreneurial learning as Entrepreneurial Scotland’s Saltire Fellowship programme was to be delivered in Scotland for the first time by Strathclyde Business School. This six month leadership development programme was introduced in partnership with Babson College in the USA and will see participants graduate in March 2019.

Also this year SBS launched Productivity through People, a 12 month programme that supports SMEs to create a high performance workplace. We were delighted to collaborate with four world class organisations who subsidised the programme – GSK, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and John Lewis Partnership. We have received fantastic feedback on this programme which aims to boost management skills and close the UK’s productivity gap – you can read a blog from recent participant Andrea Fife here.

Our innovative Breaking Barriers programme, offered in partnership with Enable Scotland and ScottishPower has been a huge success. This programme allows young people who have learning disabilities to attend a leading business school in the UK, achieve an accredited qualification, and gain real work experience with one of the largest employers in Scotland. As testament to its success, in October it won the Youth Employment Award at The Herald Diversity Awards. The second cohort is now underway with two new corporate partners participating, namely Santander and The Marriott. This is a fantastic example of how we work in socially progressive ways with business and communities.

Initiatives

As well as PtP in our executive programme range, we extended our Growth Advantage Programme offering by working with Glasgow City Council to offer iGAP. This programme is offered to some of Glasgow’s ambitious innovative enterprises at the Tontine centre to help prepare and equip to ‘scale up’ their businesses, and we are pleased to have received some fantastic feedback from those involved in that.

Student success

So, on to our students who impress me every year with their achievements and determination to make the most of their education and opportunities offered at Strathclyde.

Two undergraduate marketing students - Roxanne Colinet and Ellen Grieve - took first prize in the UK-wide marketing competition, The Pitch 2018, which saw them create a marketing plan for sponsor Wilkinson Sword. They attended the prestigious CIM (Chartered Institute of Marketing) Marketing Excellence Awards in April to receive their prize. Notably, they were one of two Strathclyde teams who made it to the final 11.

Twenty-six Strathclyde Business School students were selected to take part in this year’s Entrepreneurial Scotland Saltire Scholar Internship Programme, taking up internships with leading organisations in the UK, Europe, USA and Canada, which provides them with fantastic experiences and practical learning to bring back into their final year of studies.

Strathclyde Business School student Camille Moore was awarded the title Marketing Student of the Year 2018 at the Marketing Society Scotland awards dinner in June. Camille, a third year Master in International Business and a Modern Language (MIBML) student, competed against students from across all of the Scottish Universities in an apprentice-type day challenge and won a trophy and a paid summer internship at a Scottish Marketing agency. Fellow Strathclyde student, Emilia Higgins, a third year marketing student, was one of the two runners up for the award.

Recent Strathclyde Business School graduate Adam McGeoch was awarded £10,000 thanks to the John Mather Trust Rising Star Award. The award was presented to Adam to help him achieve his career aims and use economics – which he studied at undergraduate level at Strathclyde - to make a difference in Scotland. Adam is an outstanding student who consistently excelled in his studies while here and sought to enhance his future prospects by undertaking internship and volunteering opportunities.

Entrepreneurship and Marketing student Ruth McLaren earned recognition in a Scotland-wide company creation competition for universities. She was among the winners of an Entrepreneurial Spirit Award in the 2018 Converge Challenge and received the £1,000 cash prize for her mattress accessory company, Silver Lion Innovations – it’s great to see innovative ideas rewarded in this way.

A student from the Management Science department was a runner-up in a national prize for the best industry-based MSc dissertation. The May Hicks prize is awarded by the Operational Research Society for the best industry-based project in Operational Research in the UK, and students from Management Science have been consistently very successful in this national competition, with three winners and one runner-up in the previous 5 years. This year saw BAC student Julian Venken selected as one of the two runner-ups of the 2017 competition.

The year ahead

Looking forward to 2019, we are pleased to announce a new and exciting lecture series – Leading Forward - that has been put together for Strathclyde Business School, curated by visiting professor at the business school Dr Lena Wilson CBE. One of Scotland’s leading businesswomen, she has brought together a number of excellent speakers from the top of their business sectors to produce a series of lectures which will appeal to a wide audience, and we’re looking forward to welcoming these business leaders to Strathclyde.

We also have a couple of new programmes lined up for 2019. We’re introducing the MSc in Digital Marketing Management and the Global Master in Industrial Management with the Politecnico di Milano as a second Masters double degree programme with them to join our existing IMPM – new programmes that will add to our broad suite of MSc programmes.

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone in our Strathclyde community best wishes for 2019 and a healthy and happy 12 months ahead.

About David Hillier

David Hillier is Executive Dean and Professor of Finance at the University of Strathclyde Business School. He is the author of the largest franchise of Finance textbooks outside of the US and his specialist areas include insider trading, corporate governance, corporate finance and pensions.