SOM's integrated curriculum draws industry interest
Deans and top business school administrators flew in
from India, China, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and other nations in
February to get a closer look at the Yale Management Integrated Curriculum.
Over the course of a two-day symposium at Yale, SOM faculty walked the visitors
through every aspect of the new curriculum, including the eight
"Organizational Perspectives" that form the heart of the core
curriculum; the key elements that make up a business-school case study at SOM;
the "Leadership Development Program" and "International
Experience"; and the "Integrated Leadership Perspective," which
brings together all the elements of the core curriculum at the end of the first
year.
Two other groups interested in Yale's integrated MBA
curriculum are the MBA Roundtable, which this spring published a white paper on
Yale's curriculum reform process; and the Harvard Business School, which last
year sent a team of case-study writers to interview Yale SOM faculty, students,
and staff on the new curriculum. The resulting HBS case on the Yale SOM MBA
curriculum was discussed in detail at an HBS Centennial faculty colloquium on
the Future of MBA Education in March. Dean Joel Podolny and Deputy Dean Stan
Garstka were presenters at the colloquium, which also featured deans and
faculty from Stanford, Chicago, and INSEAD.
Prize-winning student develops case on child slavery
The plight of thousands of child slaves toiling on
cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast became a national sensation in 2001,
largely as a result of a series of stories co-authored by Sumana Chatterjee
’08MBA. As a reporter for the Washington, DC, bureau of Knight-Ridder,
Chatterjee and a colleague spent several months chronicling the exploitation of
children as young as nine on the plantations that produce more than 40 percent
of the cocoa beans for the American chocolate market. The series won the prestigious
George Polk Award for International Reporting.
Now a second-year SOM student, Chatterjee wanted to
see if the industry had kept promises to end child slavery. Working with the
school's case writing team, Chatterjee traveled to London to meet with chocolate
executives. The case study she wrote focuses on corporate governance issues for
an industry whose natural resource comes from an impoverished, unstable country
with little central government control. The case will formally debut in the
fall in an SOM course focusing on corporate governance.
Students offered international study
A new exchange program will allow second-year
students to spend their fall semester studying abroad at one of four exchange
partner schools: the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK; IESE
Business School, Barcelona, Spain; the Indian Institute of Management
Bangalore, India; and Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management,
Beijing, China. The program reflects a broader effort by SOM to expand its international
programs, which now include faculty-led trips known as the "International
Experience," required for every student. The host institutions were chosen
on the basis of academic standing and prior history of international exchange
involvement; the interests of SOM students, administration, and faculty were
also gauged during the selection process. The international exchange is
intended to offer SOM students a true study-abroad experience, both
academically and culturally, and to offer the student body general exposure to
a wider range of international students from the exchange partner schools.
"After graduating, our students are involved in business transactions all
over the world, and this program will be another way of increasing awareness of
the global marketplace, cultural diversities, and international business norms,
and of developing a firsthand understanding of today's world," said Deputy
Dean Stan Garstka.