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The new McGill-HEC Montréal EMBA, in many ways, resembles a Montreal conversation. Just as the bilingual francophone and anglophone will jump from one language to the other, the new joint program between McGill University and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Montréal will provide a lecture in French one day, a guest speaker in English another, and discussions, projects and exams in the language in which the student or professor feels more comfortable.
One of the program's two academic directors, HEC's Louis Hébert, had been lecturing at the Richard Ivey School of Business when he was approached by HEC Montréal to manage an EMBA program. He wanted the venture to reflect Montreal society and to do that, he said "bilingualism was a must," adding that a two-language program reflects the city's life.
It was the relatively small international market for EMBA programs that convinced Dr. Hébert in 2003 that his school needed to team up with McGill's Desautel Faculty of Management.
"There were too many risks that we would end up as two competitors," said Dr. Hébert, who said local recruitment would also be at risk, since both schools keep in contact with many of the same companies from where students can be drawn.
For HEC Montréal, a joint program with the anglophone university would offer them access to the wider English-speaking market and allow them to use the teachings of internationally known management expert Henry Mintzberg. McGill, through its new affiliation with HEC, would be more in touch with the francophone business sector and have access to an institution that counts 260 faculty members, a giant when compared to its 60 professors.
Dr. Hébert, who actually wrote his thesis on joint ventures in the corporate sector, saw that the mismatches in the two institutions would have to be smoothed out. HEC Montréal is a self-standing institution with a Université de Montréal affiliation, while Desautel is essentially a faculty within a university.
In 2004, senior administrators, including the dean of Desautel, were quickly on board and by 2005 a memorandum of understanding was signed and, then, this September the first classes began.
Professors and students must be comfortable in both English and French, and courses are taught usually in the mother tongue of the professor.
For Jan Schoningh and Michèle Meier, two students enrolled in this debut year of the 15-month program, being able to speak in the language in which they're most comfortable makes perfect sense. Ms. Meier says it's very freeing, while Mr. Schoningh calls the idea of a bilingual EMBA "very open-minded."
McGill's Alain Pinsonneault, the program's other academic director, appropriately enough for his role in this two-university program, earned an MSc degree from HEC and taught there from 1990-99 before moving to McGill. The joint program gives students that same type of dual affiliation, offering diploma seals from both McGill and HEC Montréal.
The average age of the students is 42, with work experience averaging 18 years. Half the 36 enrolled students hold the role of VP in their organizations.
That type of experience is something that Mr. Schoningh appreciates and what helped draw the former hotel manager and now vice-president of development at real estate company Homburg Canada Inc. to the program.
"In a classroom with people who are 27 or 28 years old, even if they're super smart, it does not replace 10 to 15 years of management experience."
The fees for the program are $65,000, prompting the 43-year-old Mr. Schoningh to remark that some men who hit middle age often buy a sports car, while he bought himself time in an EMBA program. Joking aside, he says he looked long and hard for something that would give him more depth than the summer programs in which he had previously enrolled and put him in the same room with people who had real-life business experiences.
