“ASPIRATION – INNOVATION – PASSION”: NEOMA’s innovative challenger spirit placed at the heart of its Master in Management programme

Published on 25 May 2021 by Aziza B.

Through a combination of academic excellence, innovative approaches and characteristic openness, the successful deployment of NEOMA’s 2018-2022 strategic plan continues with the unveiling of an enhanced curriculum, structured around student aspirations. The Master in Management Programme is founded on the special assets that have contributed to establishing its reputation over the past 150 years, with the addition of a number of new and exclusive pedagogical features. These include four Centres of Excellence aimed at strengthening NEOMA’s progress in the field of research. These changes are to be implemented for the start of the 2021 academic year in person on the Reims, Rouen and Paris campuses.

Placing student aspirations at the heart of the Master in Management Programme

Redesigning the Master in Management Programme is a response to the desire for meaning sought after by  new generation of students.  “Today, students want to make a success of their lives and not only their careers,” explains Delphine Manceau.  “We have listened carefully to their aspirations in order to design  a curriculum that will provide them with the keys to a career path that is synonymous with balance and passion.” 

As such, from the start of the 2021 academic year, the MiM will be structured around the following four major aspirations expressed by the students:

• “I will be a citizen of the world”, by taking up the challenges posed by environmental, diversity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and being active in a global environment undergoing profound geopolitical change;
• “I will be creative and innovative”, by putting entrepreneurial spirit and agility at the service of organisations;
• “I will be actively involved in digitalisation”, by accompanying the digital transformation of companies and individual practices;
• “I will be capable of transforming complexity into opportunity”, to meet constantly evolving challenges (logistics, finance, Big Data, etc.)

“Our promise?  To ensure coherence between what the students desire, what the school is offering, and what tomorrow’s jobs will be,” says Delphine Manceau.

Making the right choices to ensure our curriculums are coherent

The four aspirations have been structured and conceived as complementary and evolving tracks throughout the three-year duration of the programme and to offer greater flexibility.  “We allow each student to express their individuality through their choices, whilst ensuring that the courses are pedagogically coherent and recognised on the job market,” says Imen Mejri, Director of the Master in Management programme. “Therefore, a student who is passionate about the digital transformation, but who also wishes to add an international dimension to their studies, can combine a specialised Coding course with a two-year immersive experience abroad.”

 “Innovative choices that go towards enhancing this new design, exclusive to NEOMA, are to be launched at the start of the 2021 academic year ,” adds Imen Mejri.  In particular, students will be able to discover:

• An extension to the NEOSMART peer- learning initiative to include languages and entrepreneurship. This exclusive approach is based on students passing on their own knowledge to their classmates.  This was successfully launched in economics, statistics and accounting last year.

• The Coding School aimed at developing web-development skills via the School’s new collaborative and community platform.

• Four new immersive international tracks:

              ➢ Global in Big Data, in partnership with Tsinghua University (China);

              ➢ Global in Law and Management, in partnership with the Instituto de Empresa Business          School (Spain);

              ➢ Global in Entrepreneurship & Family Business, in partnership with the University of             South Florida (USA);

              ➢ Global in the Anglosphere, with the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa).

The “Global In” tracks include two academic semesters in two different countries, each with a leading university, plus two internships in the host countries.  These four new options add to the six existing tracks launched in 2019 and 2020.  “These courses provide a unique opportunity to gain invaluable experience on three levels: academic experience, professional experience and cultural experience,” says Imen Mejri.

• Twelve new international dual or triple degree tracks, making NEOMA’s Master in Management the programme with the widest range of international dual degrees

• Four “Geopolitics & Management” tracks in partnership with the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS).

Strengthening academic excellence and research

Synergies between research and teaching content are also to be strengthened.  “NEOMA has always been committed to producing research that combines excellence and student impact. Today, we are take this approach one step further by launching centres of excellence that are in perfect harmony with the aspirations of the curriculum and the challenges facing companies in a profoundly changing environment,” explains Delphine Manceau.

With the School’s research output having more than doubled over the last four years and the faculty growing each year, NEOMA’s research is now structured around four multidisciplinary centres of excellence:

• The World we want – What kind of world do we want for tomorrow and how can companies contribute to its construction?
• The Future of Work – What will the new working methods and key skills be in tomorrow’s world?
• AI, Data Science and Business – How to manage the digital transformation and its impact on organisations and society?
• The Complexity advantage – How to facilitate individual and organisational decision-making in an increasingly complex world?

Research carried out by the centres of excellence will be synergised with teaching content used the classroom.

“These announcements mark a new phase in the School’s development,” says a delighted Delphine Manceau. “We have taken the students’ aspirations as our starting point to develop our programme content and research in line with the profound changes taking place around the world and in companies.”

2021 academic year to be 100% in the classroom

 NEOMA is firmly committed to providing face-to-face courses in the classroom. “Although the challenge we have faced over the past year, with 100% remote classes and then a hybrid learning format, has been successfully overcome, the experience has also served to highlight the undeniable value of classroom teaching,” insists Delphine Manceau.

 This is why the School is to begin the new academic year in 2021 100% on campus, in the classroom. “This is an important choice because after the year we have just been through, students need to be together, more than ever, to share their learning experience, interact with their professors and to highlight the activities of the associations. We are fully aware of the psychological and learning impact of the health crisis. The idea of starting the new school year 100% on-campus is to counterbalance the remote experience of the past few months… before putting new hybrid models in place.”

 The School firmly believes that serious consideration needs to be given to the hybrid format when it comes to designing tomorrow’s pedagogical model . This is why the 100% in-class format needs to evolve. “We are currently carrying out an in-depth study to identify each teaching and learning format’s added value and which approach best suits the student experience. For us, it is a question of finding an optimal blend of remote and classroom learning. Our objective is clear: to capitalise on the experience of the past year to design an enhanced educational experience for the future.”