Message from Simon Collinson, Dean of the Business School July 2013

I also talked about the need to restructure the School to make these developments possible and enable us to fulfil our commitments to the University. The figure below gives an idea of the kind of organisation structure we have been discussing. Although some roles and functions are familiar, others, like the School Hub, are new and others (like how we develop faculty departments) have not been decided. It is clear that improving our School-level decision-making and coordination and leveraging greater economies of scale across our core School programmes will benefit the School. Discussions are continuing and SMT should be in a position to approve a new structure in time for the new Academic Year.

EQUIS Accreditation
The School has been successfully re-accredited for a further three years by the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Quality Improvement System – or EQUIS. This assesses the entire School, rather than specific programmes and we have been especially commended for our national corporate links, our institutional community outreach, our KPMG programme and our Advisory Board. Many thanks to all faculty, staff and members of the Advisory Board (and the University Vice-Chancellor) who took part in the panel visit and made such a great impression on our visitors.

Guangzhou MBA launch
I was pleased to be able spend three days launching our new MBA with our partners Jinan National University as the Business School leads on the University of Birmingham platform in Guangzhou. Following a series of discussions Professor Tan Yue, Dean of the School of Management at Jinan and I signed the partnership document with David Dickinson, Peter Clack and Vivian Zhang on hand to witness the start of this exciting joint-venture.