Griffith University’s new Business School Strategy is about meeting the challenges of a rapidly changing world.
Launched in April 2017, the new objectives for the Griffith Business School (GBS) are aimed at creating a forward-focused, future-ready Business School and will ensure that the university remains an industry leader in the field of business education.
Pro Vice Chancellor (Business) Professor David Grant believes that placing greater importance on the School’s already strong commitment to global connectedness and social responsibility is the way forward.
“The strengths of the strategy are articulated in its mission and vision,” Professor Grant explains. “The Business School’s vision places a heavy emphasis on our traditional values of socially responsible, innovative and globally connected leadership. The mission places a very heavy emphasis on our engagement with businesses, government and other community partners, and ensuring we use that engagement to deliver high-quality business education and research.”
The four main areas of strategic priority that GBS will focus on leading up to 2020 are: providing a remarkable student experience, creating high-impact research, enhancing the school’s engagement, and strengthening the Business School’s staff.
Professor Grant says the new strategy also centres on ensuring students not only have professional and basic soft skills, but also strategic skills such as critical and innovative thinking, leading to better job prospects.
“If you look at the strategic priorities, the new strategy will lead to a far richer student learning experience,” he says. “We’ve enhanced qualities such as employability, and digital enablement, through a curriculum that’s focused not just on cutting-edge professional knowledge that you need for a business career, but also on the skills and attributes that you need to enhance graduate employability such as teamwork, creative thinking and communication and critical thinking skills.
“Those are things employers look for in graduates and they are also things you are going to need if you are going to start your own business.”
The new document, created over the course of a year, was formed in consultation with the School’s professional and academic staff, as well as external stakeholders such as industry, government and alumni. Professor Grant said the consultation period was time very well spent and had been invaluable in shaping the new strategy and ensuring all stakeholders had a vision and mission they could really champion.
“It was important these stakeholders have a sense of ownership of the strategy; that they’ve had input into it, because ultimately its success will rest on them,” he explains.
The Pro Vice Chancellor (Business) continues: “My hopes would be that in seeking to achieve the objectives outlined in the strategy, we raise the quality of the student learning experience, we raise the quality and standing of our research so that it’s of value not just to our academic peers but also to our external stakeholders in government, business and the broader community that we work with.
We want the Business School to be known as a remarkable place to study and an outstanding place to work.”
To read the strategic documents in full, click here.