Media Releases

Rotman School Dean to step down. Led period of dramatic growth at the School

October 17, 2012

TORONTO, ON — The Dean of Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment has announced that he will be end­ing his third term as Dean on June 30, 2013, one year ear­li­er than the for­mal con­clu­sion of his third term.

Roger Mar­tin, who joined the Rot­man School as Dean in May 1998, will remain at the School’s Mar­tin Pros­per­i­ty Insti­tute in a lead­er­ship posi­tion, focus­ing his work on the future of demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ism.

“There are two rea­sons I am tak­ing this step. First, the School is in fab­u­lous shape,” says Mar­tin, who cites the recent open­ing of a new build­ing, the expan­sion of pro­grams includ­ing the Full Time MBA pro­gram, and the devel­op­ment of a world-class fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tive team among oth­er achieve­ments. “Sec­ond­ly, I believe the School is well-posi­tioned to make a mean­ing­ful glob­al con­tri­bu­tion to demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ism, whose future is being ques­tioned. The School has many assets that can be brought to bear in address­ing these ques­tions, includ­ing our research cen­tres such as the Mar­tin Pros­per­i­ty Insti­tute, and the research of many of our fac­ul­ty.”

Under Roger Mar­t­in’s lead­er­ship the School has seen a dra­mat­ic growth in the size of its pro­grams, fac­ul­ty, facil­i­ties and inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion. The School also built a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed cur­ricu­lum around Inte­gra­tive Think­ing and a suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tive on Busi­ness Design. Oth­er high­lights of the school’s progress include:

  • This Sep­tem­ber, the School admit­ted its largest Full Time MBA class in its his­to­ry of 313 stu­dents in five sec­tions, up from two sec­tions and 130 stu­dents in 1998.
  • Cel­e­brat­ing its fifth anniver­sary this month, the Morn­ing MBA pro­gram, with class­es start­ing at 7:00 am, gives stu­dents who study part-time an inno­v­a­tive alter­na­tive to the tra­di­tion­al Evening MBA for­mat.
  • A new Mas­ter of Finance pro­gram gives work­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the field the best the­o­ret­i­cal and applied finance train­ing avail­able.
  • The Rot­man PhD pro­gram has been expand­ed and in Jan­u­ary 2012, the Finan­cial Times placed it among the top fif­teen pro­grams in the world.
  • A sec­ond Exec­u­tive MBA pro­gram was added. The Omni­um Glob­al MBA pro­gram is an 18-month inter­na­tion­al learn­ing expe­ri­ence which immers­es work­ing pro­fes­sion­als in core busi­ness dis­ci­plines from a glob­al per­spec­tive.
  • The school has also seen growth in its Exec­u­tive Edu­ca­tion pro­grams offer­ing a wide range of cus­tom and open enrol­ment pro­grams in Toron­to and around the world, that rank among the top pro­gram in the world, accord­ing to the Finan­cial Times.
  • In Sep­tem­ber, a new build­ing expan­sion was offi­cial­ly opened which more than dou­bles the amount of teach­ing, research, study, pre­sen­ta­tion and spe­cial event space avail­able to the Rot­man School com­mu­ni­ty. The nine-storey-high project is seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed with the Rot­man School’s exist­ing five-storey home, which opened in 1995. It con­tains sev­en new 70-seat class­rooms, a state-of-the-art Event Hall which can seat up to 500 peo­ple for a lec­ture, fac­ul­ty and staff offices, a ground floor café with seat­ing for 130, four out­door spaces includ­ing ter­races and green roofs, as well as over 60 new study rooms.

Mar­tin, who holds the Pre­mier’s Research Chair in Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty & Com­pet­i­tive­ness, has writ­ten 15 Har­vard Busi­ness Review arti­cles and pub­lished sev­en books. His next book, Play­ing to Win — How Strat­e­gy Real­ly Works, co-writ­ten with A.G. Lafley, the for­mer CEO of Proc­ter & Gam­ble, will be pub­lished by Har­vard Busi­ness Review Press in Feb­ru­ary 2013.

In 2011, Roger placed 6th on the Thinkers50 list, a bian­nu­al rank­ing of the most influ­en­tial glob­al busi­ness thinkers, shar­ing the top ten with Clay Chris­tensen, Michael Porter and Mal­colm Glad­well, among oth­ers. In 2010, he was named one of the 27 most influ­en­tial design­ers in the world by Busi­ness­Week. In 2007 he was named a Busi­ness­Week ‘B‑School All-Star’ for being one of the 10 most influ­en­tial busi­ness pro­fes­sors in the world. Busi­ness Week also named him one of sev­en ‘Inno­va­tion Gurus’ in 2005.

He serves on the Boards of Thom­son Reuters Cor­po­ra­tion, Research in Motion, The Skoll Foun­da­tion, and the Cana­di­an Cred­it Man­age­ment Foun­da­tion. He is the chair of Ten­nis Cana­da and chair of the Ontario Task Force on Com­pet­i­tive­ness, Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and Eco­nom­ic Progress.

“There is a lot of work that I would like to do and it is time for my next phase. I am excit­ed about going to the MPI and work­ing with the peo­ple there to make it a lead­ing insti­tu­tion work­ing on shap­ing the future of demo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ism,” says Mar­tin. “That par­tic­u­lar agen­da needs a lot more work, and I look for­ward to get­ting on with it. I also look for­ward to work­ing with the Inter­im Dean, when appoint­ed, on mak­ing the tran­si­tion.”

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions. The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure that Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Office: 416–946-3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool