Acknowledged as a leading Canadian and international business school, the Schulich School of Business at York University is located in Toronto, Canada's financial capital. Founded in 1966, Schulich is known for its innovative programming, global orientation and diverse faculty and student body. It offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate business degrees leading to the private, public and nonprofit sectors. Some 20,000 Schulich graduates work in more than 80 countries worldwide. Its Executive Education Centre annually enrolls 14,000 executives in Canada and abroad.

The school only offered an Executive MBA Program after it knew it could meet three conditions: differentiating the program from competing EMBAs, delivering a world-class product and maximizing student and sponsor ROI. Partnering with the Kellogg School of Management made it possible to meet all three. Schulich is extremely proud of the Kellogg-Schulich partnership which created North America's first ever cross-border executive MBA.

Officially launched in January 2002, the Kellogg-Schulich EMBA has just graduated its fourth cohort. The success of the program is due to our students, faculty, staff, the curriculum and the Kellogg international EMBA partnership. We have attracted Canadian students from coast to coast, as well as some from the United States. Each cohort has also included several students who flew in biweekly to classes from countries as distant as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, to name a couple. Our students represent every sector of the economy, including financial services, oil and gas, IT, biotech, manufacturing, retail, media and nonprofits. They are as accomplished in their personal lives as they are professionally.

With their energy and love of learning, the faculty from Kellogg, Schulich and our international partners have been a source of inspiration. They are able to subtly balance theory and practice, and in doing so, motivate students to push to attain ever greater heights, despite having to balance work, study and family. Our EMBA students established "Professor of the Year" awards for each school. Although not an easy choice given the high caliber of instruction all around, Kellogg Professors Steve Rogers and Ranjay Gulati and Schulich Professors Gordon Roberts and Ellen Auster have been recent winners.

In 2004, the program moved 20 kilometers north of the city from Schulich's downtown campus to York's main campus. Its new home is the Executive Learning Centre (ELC) portion of the school's new multimillion-dollar building complex, recently awarded the Governor-General's Medal for Architecture. The ELC features state-of-the-art class- and break-out rooms, a 60-room residence hotel and executive dining room.

Although our students have been happy with all aspects of the curriculum, they praise the two-week residence program at Kellogg and the International Study Module. This year, KS-04 members were the guests of the Kellogg School's academic partner in China, the Business School at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). There, they shared "Doing Business in China" and "Doing Business in the Asia Pacific Region" courses with the Kellogg School's EMBA program from Germany, the WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management. They also visited companies together and explored Hong Kong.