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Rotman School at U of T receives $10 Million Boost for Integrative Thinking

Rotman School at U of T receives $10 Million Boost for Integrative Thinking

Toronto, June 15, 2005 –The University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management has received a significant boost in its quest to revolutionize business education with a $10-million gift from the Canadian Credit Management Foundation (CCMF).

The Marcel Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking was established at the Rotman School in 2000 with an initial $10-million gift from the foundation and its president, Marcel Desautels. With the announcement of an additional $10-million donation, the centre will make a major impact on Canadian and global business worldwide by developing the world’s first truly integrative business school curriculum.

“We are grateful to Marcel and CCMF for their continued and generous support in the development of Integrative Thinking as a new way of thinking about business,” says Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School. “As global business becomes increasingly complex, formulaic approaches to problem solving are increasingly ineffective. Success in today’s environment does not result from emulating others but from using organizational assets to build unique models, products and experiences. Such creative business solutions are not the result of simplification and specialization but of what we at the Rotman School call Integrative Thinking.”

The establishment of this centre has been pivotal to the Rotman School’s goal to become one of the world’s top business schools by leading an evolution of the traditional business school model. The additional $10-million gift from the CCMF to the centre will strengthen its teaching and research activities and could include enhanced programs, curriculum development and the recruitment of new faculty, among other initiatives.

“During my career, I recognized that business school students were not graduating with the full complement of skills necessary to help their new organizations address real-world challenges,” says CCMF president and chief executive officer Marcel Desautels. “Roger Martin and the Rotman School have, to date, made significant progress in developing a new model. This second gift will help the school achieve its goals.”

Since the foundation’s initial gift in 2000, the Rotman School has revamped the curriculum for its full- and part-time MBA programs, including the addition of the elective Integrative Thinking Practicum, a robust and interactive experience with a high faculty-student ratio. Integrative Thinking modules have also been added to Rotman’s One-Year MBA for Executives and the school’s other custom and open enrolment executive programs.

The Marcel Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking has attracted visiting scholars, organized international academic conferences and hosted more than 40 sessions of the Rotman Integrative Thinking Seminar Series. This ongoing series provides Rotman students, faculty and the local business community a rare opportunity to get ‘inside the heads’ of some of today’s leading integrative thinkers.

The Canadian Credit Management Foundation was formed in 1996 following the sale of Creditel of Canada Limited, a business credit information firm serving 12,000 Canadian corporations. The foundation, with Desautels as president and CEO, supports specific educational organizations and institutions in Canada in the fields of business and finance.