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Sheridan College’s planned 220,000-square-feet Hazel McCallion Campus building is to have 29 classrooms and house several program clusters, including business.

The Globe's biweekly business-school news roundup.

College degree programs in business are proving popular with students, with one Ontario institution expanding its footprint to meet demand.

Sheridan College has announced plans for a 220,000-square-foot building to open in fall 2016 at its Mississauga campus, named for the municipality's long-serving and just-retired mayor Hazel McCallion. The new building will house an expanded business faculty and other disciplines.

The college also announced the business faculty will be named after Randy and Catherine Pilon, whose donation of $2.5-million is the largest in the college's history.

Mr. Pilon, a 1982 graduate of Sheridan's business program, is the founder and chief executive officer of disinfectant company Virox Technologies Inc. A long-time business faculty supporter, he sponsors one-day events that link students and entrepreneurs. The Pilon donation kick-starts a $9-million capital campaign to complement $67.3-million in provincial capital funds pledged for the building.

"There are many entrepreneurs who were born on third base and think they hit a triple," Mr. Pilon stated in a Sheridan press release announcing the gift. "I started from scratch and worked really hard to get to where I am today. I hope my story will serve as an inspiration to future generations of Sheridan business students."

Sheridan's business faculty enrols about 1,600 students in 20 programs at its Oakville, Ont., Mississauga and Brampton, Ont., campuses, with annual growth capped at 4 per cent because of space constraints.

"We are filled to the roof," says business faculty dean Sylvia Lowndes, who says the impetus for growth is demand for four-year degree programs, including six from her faculty introduced in September.

With an initial intake of 140 students this fall, the business degree programs are expected to grow exponentially to about 1,100 students by 2020.

Ms. Lowndes says, "There is a growing demographic for this category of programs," citing interest among young people in a still fast-growing region of Ontario.

New PhD program for 2015

Unlike many of its counterparts, the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa has not offered a PhD in management.

But that is set to change next year when, subject to Ontario government funding, Telfer plans to offer a PhD focused on entrepreneurship, health systems, accounting and control, finance and organizational behaviour and human resource management.

"We want our students, when they come out, to be grounded in the world in which they will live, whether in academia, the private or public sector," says Martine Spence, Telfer vice-dean of research. "We need the fields we are developing [for the PhD] but we also need people who can socialize in different environments."

Initially, she expects to enrol six students, with 10 to 15 students once the program is at capacity.

In addition to the academic component – compulsory and elective courses as well as an oral and written exam – students will be required to participate in a doctoral leadership program that trains them to write proposals and articles and look for a job. During the program, students will have to present research papers in a public forum where they will be assessed by peers and professors.

"We have to train people who can count, do marketing, who can sell and manage people but on the other hand we are part of a research-intensive university, which means our reputation is going to be based on the papers we publish," says Prof. Spence.

Six Canadian schools make FT EMBA ranking

Led by York University's Schulich School of Business for the eighth year in a row, six Canadian executive MBA programs made the top-100 global list compiled by the Financial Times.

Schulich placed 33rd globally, followed by the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management (45); Queen's School of Business and Cornell University (a joint program) (47); Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario (48); the University of Alberta Business School and University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business (also a joint program) (87); and Queen's School of Business, with its own EMBA (99). All the Canadian schools fell several points because of FT's heavy weighting on pre– and post-EMBA salaries.

Donors add to policy research centre

Five energy-sector donors have pledged $1.25-million over five years to expand the research activities of the Ivey Business School's Energy Policy and Management Centre.

The donation from Atco Ltd., OMERS (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System), Power Workers' Union, TransCanada Corp., and Union Gas Ltd., is in support of the centre's mandate to "contribute to the national public debate on energy sector policy development," according to a press release from Ivey.

New honours for Henry Mintzberg

Globally-recognized management studies guru Henry Mintzberg of McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management has received the university's 2014 lifetime achievement award for leadership in learning for his "extraordinary contributions to teaching and learning" over the past four decades.

Follow Jennifer Lewington and Business School News by subscribing to an RSS feed here.

Contact Jennifer at jlewington@bell.net.

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