Industry leaders back UCLan business school

The Preston-based University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has formally launched its Lancashire School for Business and Enterprise (LSBE) with its dean predicting “exciting opportunities” ahead.

Business leaders from across the North West joined guests at the event, which was held on the university’s Preston Campus.

Professor Chris Pyke, LSBE executive dean, said the school aimed to work closely with business and wanted to be “at the heart of our region”.

He said: “The vision is to be an innovative and entrepreneurial school working with business, positively changing lives by inspiring and empowering students, through excellent business and management programmes, informed by high quality impactful research and enterprise activity.

“Business and the public sector are in the midst of an extraordinary revolution, powered by information technology.

“The implementation of data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems is growing exponentially.

“The challenge for our business school is how to educate and develop the next generation business leaders, managers and entrepreneurs who are fit for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future.”

The school, which has recently joined the European Foundation for Management Development and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, has partners in China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Sri Lanka and Australia.

Prof Pyke added: “We recognise that our graduates must have the skills demanded by employers, not just the technical knowledge, but the soft skills too: excellent communication skills, able to solve complex problems, an ability to collaborate with others, to think critically, innovate and be creative, to manage their time effectively, be resilient and have a great work ethic.

“We also want to develop responsible and ethical leaders, managers and entrepreneurs.”

As well as the launch of the school, the attendees took part in a ‘Kindness in Chaos’ conference.

They heard from Professor Mike Thomas, UCLan’s vice-chancellor, who gave a lecture on ‘Kindness in Leadership’. [caption id="attachment_98008" align="alignnone" width="500"] Chris Pyke[/caption]