CENTRE FOR ADVANCED MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
A focus on leadership: Dal’s new MBA Flexible. Be anywhere, work anywhere while you earn your degree.
ABOVE: MID-CAREER PROFESSIONALS ARE DRAWN TO THE FLEXIBILITY OF CFAME’S BLENDED-ONLINE PROGRAMS.
For the past 20 years, the Centre for Advanced Management Education (CFAME) has been enrolling mid-career professionals from across Canada for a blended-online MBA. Students in the program continue to work while completing the MBA Financial Services degree. Now, with two decades of success behind them, CFAME is branching out with a new MBA Leadership program. “It’s the only MBA in Canada focused on leadership and it reflects the latest thinking on the subject,” says Dr. Martine DurierCopp, CFAME Director. “We were getting requests for a more general MBA that isn’t focused specifically on the financial services sector. We chose leadership because we have a strong group in the faculty who specialize in that area.” The Leadership stream follows the same format as the Financial Services (FS) program. “The model is blended,” says Durier-Copp, “so throughout the term the students learn through our web-based
learning management system, and at the end of each term they gather across the country for face-to-face intensives.” CFAME’s MBA programs are the only ones in Canada to use a blended format, and Durier-Copp says that CFAME is constantly studying its own model: “We’re also a research centre of e-learning, so we examine the efficacy of this model, which evidence shows yields a higher level of success than just e-learning.” Dr. Jim Barker, a faculty member in the MBA-FS and the new Leadership program, explains the thought behind blended delivery. “We worked very hard to create courses that fit this model,” he says, “and we think very carefully about what is done online and what is done in the intensive sessions to maximize both of those.” For instance, Barker teaches a course in management skills development, required for both Financial Services and Leadership students. Peer-to-peer
15 dal.ca/management
learning is an important component of management skills development for these students, but it’s difficult to get peer learning online, he says. “So I focus the online segment on learning the basic knowledge, and during the intensive the students use that knowledge to maximize the peer-to-peer experience.” Barker reflects on the importance of the new program: “The benefit of the MBA Leadership is an understanding of how the Canadian workplace is evolving,” he says. “Organizations are getting increasingly complex, and the best example of that is the growth of technology, especially analytics. Those applications create a lot of opportunities but they also create very difficult managerial issues. What is needed particularly in the Canadian workforce is leaders with the skills to excel in these environments. That’s what our program addresses.” – Miriam Breslow