This months @IveyMScStudents team blog post has been sent to us by Linh Tran (twitter.com/linci2703), MSc CEMS 2016 and CEMS Club Canada President. In her post, Linh takes a look back at the third term of her @IveyMSc experience, and what the CEMS Club Canada was able to accomplish.
As the fall term and the year 2015 are coming to an end, I would love to look back at the amazing time spent with my Ivey classmates and exchange CEMSies and highlight some of the most memorable moments from the CEMS Club Canada experience. Each term of the MSc-CEMS program is an emotional rollercoaster: every few months we meet new people from around the world, make new friendships, learn new lessons from each other, and then go through a nostalgic week of back-to-back farewells. And then this cycle repeats itself again until we all graduate. This experience truly teaches us how to value and make the best out of limited time together and maintain long-distance friendships for life. I can’t believe that next term and year it will be my turn to leave my home school at Ivey and explore how it is to be an exchange CEMSie.
It was an honour to be elected a CEMS Club President this year and work with such a multicultural and committed team. I was working alongside my fellow Ivey co-execs Sumer and Christina, joined by Rafa (ESADE), Matthias (ESADE), Giada (Bocconi), Noortje (RSM) and Shriya (NUS). As part of my platform, I wanted to bring in the new Corporate Social Responsibility stream into CEMS Club Canada, as commitment to responsible and ethical approaches to management education is one of the main goals of the CEMS program. This is also aligned perfectly with the launch of the Global Sustainability Week — an annual initiative organized by all CEMS Clubs in October. In addition, I wanted to continue with the Canadian Experience series by organizing unique events to help our exchange friends learn more about their host country.
cems clubs presidents conference
We started off the school year with a Block Seminar — a week-long series of lectures, group work, and field trips. The topic of this year was “Managing Turbulence in the VUCA World” covering an important skill for every business student to develop. We had an opportunity to learn about leadership in turbulent and ever-changing environments from both multinationals, such as McKinsey, Google, and Bombardier, and local companies, including Christie Digital, Vanhawks, and Mill Street Brewery.
I would love to focus more on our brand new and incredibly successful event organized by CEMS Club Canada together with Ivey MSc, which was the “Refugee Crisis Event” that we hope to continue into the Ivey Global Thinker series. This idea was brought up by our program director, Andreas Schotter, during a meeting as a casual thought inspired by the movie Dead Poet’s Society.
We originally wanted to gather our classmates and have a discussion about the Syrian crisis, but with the help of the administration and the CEMS network we ended up having a truly global event with the online live stream and nine CEMS schools tuning in with guest professor Oana Branzei facilitating the discussion. Inspired by the success of this event, we also collaborated with the Jeremiah House (London Cross Cultural Learning Centre) and went there a couple of times to help them prepare breakfast for newcomers and play with the children. We also organized a food drive for them to collect donations for Christmas.
In terms of cultural and social events, our exchange students absolutely loved the school vibe during Homecoming as well as the heartwarming spirit of Thanksgiving. We even had a delicious potluck with three enormous turkeys organized at the famous Beaufort Street where most of the exchange students live!
This year I was also very fortunate to be representing Ivey and Canada at the biannual CEMS Club Presidents’ meeting in Vienna. It was a two-day conference at Vienna University of Economics and Business, which gathered presidents from 24 CEMS schools. It was a productive and inspiring experience, as we all got to share best practices and ideas with each other. Moreover, we learned that we all had common goals and similar issues regardless of the size, location, and newness of the club.
Overall, looking back at this term, I am extremely proud of our accomplishments and results. More importantly, we managed to deliver a true Canadian welcome to our exchange CEMSies and make them feel at home by the end of their stay.