Media Releases

Event hall at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management named in honour of Marcel A. Desautels

May 24, 2013

TORONTO, ON – A new­ly-opened event space at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment which has already host­ed events with glob­al lead­ers from the fields of man­age­ment, pol­i­tics and aca­d­e­mics, has been named in hon­our of one of the School’s lead­ing bene­fac­tors.

The space will be known as Desau­tels Hall in hon­our of Dr. Mar­cel A. Desau­tels, befit­ting the school’s most gen­er­ous donor, who has giv­en an extra­or­di­nary $41 mil­lion to the Rot­man School.

The announce­ment was made today dur­ing a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion to Desau­tels at the Rot­man School’s annu­al Life Long Learn­ing Con­fer­ence for alum­ni and mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty by Uni­ver­si­ty Pres­i­dent David Nay­lor and Rot­man Dean Roger Mar­tin.

“We are eter­nal­ly grate­ful for the sup­port, both moral and finan­cial, the School has received from Mar­cel,” says Roger Mar­tin. “Inte­gra­tive Think­ing is at the heart of all we do at the School and Desau­tels Hall is a vital space which allows us to con­nect with the wider com­mu­ni­ty with our events and con­certs.”

“Mar­cel Desau­tels is a man of extra­or­di­nary vision and gen­eros­i­ty who has played a sin­gu­lar role in the growth and devel­op­ment of the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment. His fram­ing of the chal­lenges in mod­ern man­age­ment edu­ca­tion, and his mul­ti­ple bene­fac­tions, have posi­tioned U of T to help form the next gen­er­a­tion of Cana­di­an and glob­al busi­ness inno­va­tors,” says David Nay­lor.

Desau­tels is the pres­i­dent and CEO of the Cana­di­an Cred­it Man­age­ment Foun­da­tion. At the Rot­man School, his dona­tions have estab­lished the Desau­tels Cen­tre for Inte­gra­tive Think­ing, sup­port­ed stu­dent schol­ar­ships and helped the School open a new facil­i­ty last year. The expan­sion dou­bles the amount of teach­ing, research, study, pre­sen­ta­tion and spe­cial event space avail­able to the Rot­man School com­mu­ni­ty. The nine-sto­ry-high project is seam­less­ly inte­grat­ed with the Rot­man School’s exist­ing home and pro­vides a new home to sev­er­al of the Rot­man School’s research and edu­ca­tion cen­tres includ­ing the Desau­tels Cen­tre. The expan­sion also includes the state-of-the-art Desau­tels Hall which can seat up to 500 peo­ple for a lec­ture, class or spe­cial event.

The Desau­tels Cen­tre has quick­ly gained an inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion through its work on research­ing, under­stand­ing and teach­ing Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Inte­gra­tive thinkers build mod­els rather than choose between them. Their mod­els include con­sid­er­a­tion of numer­ous vari­ables — cus­tomers, employ­ees, com­peti­tors, capa­bil­i­ties, cost struc­tures, indus­try evo­lu­tion and reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment — not just a sub­set of the above.

Desau­tels is well-known for his sup­port of Cana­di­an post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion includ­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to as well as the Desau­tels Fac­ul­ty of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Win­nipeg and the Desau­tels Fac­ul­ty of Man­age­ment at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty.

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 Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
E‑mail mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool