All Posts Tagged With: "sauder school of business"
This business professor is a creativity crusader
Darren Dahl earns a 3M National Teaching Fellowship
Dahl (sauder.ubc.ca)
Darren Dahl, a professor and associate dean of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, is a 3M National Teaching Fellowship recipient for 2013. Maclean’s On Campus is profiling all 10 in the coming weeks.
“I don’t use technology,” says University of British Columbia professor Darren Dahl of his creativity course. “Technology is great for some topics, but I can engage at a much higher level without it.”
To show he’s serious, any student who opens his or her computer or whose phone rings during class must donate $100 to charity. His own phone once went off. “Boom. $100 in the pot,” he says.
It keeps students focused on discussions that Dahl referees. It also leaves time for plenty of games. His focus on keeping students engaged is one of the reasons he was awarded one of 10 prestigious 3M National Teaching Fellowships for 2013.
Continue reading This business professor is a creativity crusader
Consumerism on display at the University of B.C.
Millennial students are materialistic and proud
Fora do Eixo/Flickr
In a famous scene from the 1995 film Clueless, protagonist Cher Horowitz is robbed but, though scared out of her wits, refuses to get on the dirty ground. “Oh, no. You don’t understand. This is Alaïa,” she says of her dress to the gunman. “It’s, like, a totally important designer.”
In the mid-1990s, Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz was comedic relief, an exception to the rule. Today, many of us are Cher Horowitz.
A staggering 34 percent of American Millennials grew up wealthy, according to Forbes, and the figures are likely similar in Canada.
Luxury items, previously reserved for the one percent, are now more accessible than ever and much of the student population at the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver where I study seems swept up in luxury consumerism.
Darren Dahl, who specializes in consumer behavior at UBC, views abundance as the primary ethos of our society. “Previous generations like the Baby Boomers didn’t have the discretionary income some of the kids today have,” he says. “Because there’s a higher level of discretionary income, there’s an ability to spend in this cohort that wasn’t in existence in previous cohorts.”
Continue reading Consumerism on display at the University of B.C.
Should I do an M.B.A.?
In the face of challenges, Canada’s business schools adapt
Rotman students (Andrew Tolson)
Peter Thiel’s career is the stuff of business legend. He co-founded PayPal and was the first outside investor in Facebook, paying future CEO Mark Zuckerberg $500,000 for 10 per cent of the company back in 2004. When the social networking giant held its IPO earlier this year, Thiel took home $640 million after selling off part of his stake. Since then, Facebook shares have lost half their value, but Thiel still managed to recently pocket $400 million after a regulatory lock-up agreement for insiders expired. In other words, while just about everyone else lost money on Facebook shares, Thiel made out like a bandit. It pays to get in first.
Empowering African entrepreneurs
Program teaches young people to write business plans, aims to help build business
This week, a team of Sauder School of Business students from the University of British Columbia are travelling to Africa as part of the Sauder Africa Initiative. Students from Strathmore University in Nairobi and UBC are collaborating to educate and mentor African youth through business development workshops.
Sauder Africa Initiative – Sauder School of Business, UBC from tyfn on Vimeo.
Professor Nancy Langton, who developed the initiative, says local knowledge of participating Kenyan students is integral to the success of the program. Two participating MBA student team members, Joanna Pedersen and Jonathan Kaida, tell us more about the program and why they decided to get involved.
Some excerpts:
[The Sauder Africa Initiative is] a way of bringing education to people and using some of our skills and some of our knowledge from the classroom, and some of our knowledge theoretically on the ground, to help young people and encourage them to work within their communities and work with some of the unemployment problems they face.
- Professor Nancy Langton, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resources Division
…I thought the setup of the program was really progressive, it was focused on education and not financing and I thought it was a great opportunity to use some of the skills that I had acquired through the program.
- Jonathan Kaida, MBA student
Jonathan Kaida, Joanna Pedersen, and Professor Nancy Langton
