Exeter Business School Focuses on Community Development: MBA News

Exeter Business School, which currently runs the One Planet MBA program, is undergoing a major reconstruction of its Penryn Campus, local newspaper the Western Morning News, reveals.

The £5.5 million (US$9.21 Million) construction will contain an area dedicated specifically for business engagement, ‘The Collaboratory’, where students will be able to immerse themselves in projects with local business partners led by staff at Exeter Business School’s Penryn Campus.

The new purpose-built business school will incorporate the key elements of the university’s most successful MBA degree, “we have been mindful of all that the local area has to offer in terms of opportunities, as well as incorporating some of the elements and thinking behind our world-leading One Planet MBA,” explains professor Sandy Williams, associate dean of education at Exeter Business School.

The school’s new home will open with a BSc in Business program, before expanding the selection of courses on offer to encompass postgraduate offerings. In particular, Exeter Business School aims to draw on the strengths of the local community by offering local scholarships to students in Cornwall and its reputation to provide a strong grounding in sustainability, innovation, community development and social enterprise.

Exeter Business School targets community development

Unlike the worldly focus of Exeter’s One Planet MBA degree, the redevelopment of its business school represents a strategy to reinforce the institution’s presence in the local community around the Penryn Campus and boost overall economic community development. The strategy is centered around offering an international MBA experience to students from Cornwall by offering exclusive, local scholarships.

Alongside the economic community development, a selection of local scholarships, £1,500 (US$2,511.45) in value each, will be made available exclusively to students from Cornwall, where the Penryn Campus is located. The institute will also boast links with a variety of established research centers at Exeter Business School, including the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, the Environment and Sustainability Institute and Camborne School of Mines, each of which focus on economics, mathematics and project management respectively.

Associate dean Sandy Williams, is confident that offering local scholarships will promote community development among young locals who typically miss out on Exeter’s other, more internationally-focused, MBA degree options, “For the first time, local young people can stay in their own county and study for a mainstream business degree….this is a truly innovative program and we're very much looking forward to welcoming our first cohort of students in [October] 2015”

Exeter Business School is an EQUIS and AACSB accredited institution that features in the latest edition of the QS Global 200 Business Schools Report. The institution’s One Planet MBA degree was awarded the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) Green Gown Award, which recognizes exceptional sustainability initiatives undertaken by universities and colleges within the UK, for its innovative and interdisciplinary approach.