European Foundation for Management Development, Undergraduate Programme Management conference

Barbara Armstrong writes about her visit to St Petersburg for the European Foundation for Management Development, Undergraduate Programme Management.

"I have recently returned from the undergraduate programme managers’ conference, which this year was held at the Graduate School of Management in St Petersburg. I attend the conference every year, and am on the steering committee. It is always a very useful conference with attendees from all over the world, not just Europe. This year the only continent not represented was Africa (and of course Antarctica!)

One of the benefits of attending the conference is you get to know people from all over the world who regularly attend. It his surprising the similarities we face in context and problems, despite our very significantly different educational environments. There are set presentations, yes, but a lot of time is given over to round table discussions based on the conference theme.

Usually the conference takes as its starting point a theme that has been raised the previous year. This year’s theme was to try and envision and prepare responses to how the education sector would look in 2020 .

As a starting point EFMD organised a student led competition. As a marketer this makes total sense as students are after all our customers. The prize – a trip to St Petersburg for 3 winning team members was funded by Babson College and the University of Richmond in Virginia, and Babson provided the infrastructure to host and publicise the entries, all of which can be seen at: www.efmdvision2020.org.

Unfortunately, despite my publicising the competition, which admittedly was advertised very late, there were no entries from Birmingham, but there were entries from across the Americas, Asia and Europe.

All students had surprisingly similar visions. They talked about 'cloud education systems' about employers being involved directly in education, about students working in 'global teams' via conferencing systems, about the need to study more than just business modules, and about student involvement when designing programmes. The winning entry was a team of Chinese exchange students from Solbridge University, South Korea, These three young women expressed the vision clearly and succinctly maybe because they were Communications students.

We organised the speakers before the completion entries had been submitted, but they followed similar themes. Daniel Everett, Dean of Arts & Sciences, Bentley University, US, and a former Amazon missionary spoke about Bentley’s attempt to fuse Philosophy in its business courses. Nils Øby, from BI Norwegian School of Management, spoke about the research BI had undertaken into the needs of the future. Along with other members of the steering committee, I took part in a role play 'fishbowl' event, designed to spark discussion among conference participants. My character was a 26 year old call centre worker who was convinced she could do her boss's job but needed the degree certificate to prove it – a classic restless Robert (student engagement, evidenced by studious Susan and Robert was the theme of another conference).

I am happy to talk about the conference if anyone wants to and have copies of the Powerpoint presentations, (and the Susan and Robert video.). Maybe you would like to accompany me to the 2014 conference.

The steering committee will meet soon to discuss next year’s theme, and I would welcome suggestions.

We also plan to run the video competition again, hopefully with more time to prepare. Please encourage your students to take part. The prize next year will be a trip to the US."