UCD Smurfit school aims to enhance its position amid emerging market trends

Professor Federica Pazzaglia has a number of priority areas to focus on as she takes up her new role as director of the UCD Smurfit school. These include increasing the already impressive level of diversity in its student body, and enhancing the resonance of its research and other activities for business policy and practice.

Her first priority is to enhance the positioning of the Smurfit school programme offering in areas of relevance to both students and employers in light of emerging market trends. She believes that is very much in keeping with the Smurfit school’s tradition of providing a transformational learning experience for students.

“UCD developed the first MBA programme in Europe in 1964,” she notes. “We were much in advance of the curve even back then. The spirit of pushing the envelope in what we teach is very much in our DNA.”

Today, that means ensuring teaching at the school is relevant to the next stages of students’ career and life journeys and encompasses the latest market trends in areas such as sustainability and disruptive technologies. It also extends to the way in which programmes are delivered.

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“We have gained from what we learned during the pandemic,” she says. “We were forced to experiment with technology for remote teaching and learning and that has been very useful for us. We were challenged to do it in a way that was engaging. We always want to do that but doing it online and in a blended format is not straightforward. We had to learn a lot very quickly. That brought us to thinking about doing more in that space and if it would allow us to do more for students in terms of flexibility. We wanted to do more with the new skills we had acquired.”

The results are already in evidence with the MSC in project management having been offered initially as a hybrid course with the part-time programme now available fully online. The part-time master’s in management is now also available fully online.

“The feedback from project management students has been very positive,” she notes. “They appreciate the flexibility it offers in terms of location and the ability to learn on their own terms. We intend to do more going forward.”

She explains that the blended or fully online format will also enable the participation of speakers and subject matter experts who may live abroad or be otherwise unable to travel to the Smurfit school campus.

Course content is also important. “In the past year we have sharpened our focus on the sustainability space. Every industry is being asked to do more in that area. This generation of students demands a greater focus on it. We see different manifestations of it across the whole portfolio of programmes including the MSc in sustainable supply chain management and the MSc in sustainable finance. We are making sure our portfolio is constantly evolving and grounded in rigorous expertise, research and practice.”

The second priority is to continue existing efforts to grow the diversity of the student cohort across gender and country of origin. “We want to continue to make a contribution to our local community but also attract the best talent from overseas. Postgraduate students can learn as much from each other as they do from formal lectures. If we can get a class with a mix of backgrounds, specialities and so on that will better prepare our students for the world of work. We have already established partnerships with colleges in key markets around the world where the Smurfit brand has resonance due to its history and reputation.”

Gender diversity is particularly important to the Smurfit school, she adds. “We have been looking at barriers to woman applicants and what we can do to reduce or remove them. One way is the modular delivery of the executive MBA programme. This shows potential to address some of the issues through flexible delivery. For example, in our latest intake of 37 students to the programme, we have 20 women and many of them mentioned its flexibility as a key reason for undertaking it. We are constantly looking at how we can do more to help our students.”

Enhancing the resonance of the school’s research and activities for business practice and policy through greater and targeted dissemination is the other priority. “This is very close to my heart,” says Prof Pazzaglia. “Research and teaching and the student experience are all parts of an interconnected system. This is a place where knowledge is created in relation to how business is done. The majority of our 120 faculty members are doing really exciting work in a wide variety of areas. We want to ensure that the business world is aware of this so that we can influence practice and policy and benefit Irish society. That means becoming more effective at reaching out beyond our academic domain and engaging with the wider community.”