A Love for business

As I walk into the airy Business School on time for a meeting (for once), I wonder where any offices could be. Having snuck in by nefarious means, attempting to be clandestine as I tailgate an unsuspecting accomplice, I realise that the furthest I’ve ever been into the Business School is the café.

Colin Love is a slight rarity really. He’s friendly, speaks his mind, and is honest: Paxman would be a bit shocked when he just answers a question straight. If titles were gold, he’d have Fort Knox in his office somewhere. He is: Principal Teaching Fellow – meaning his academic focus is on teaching; Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Business School; Director of the MSc Strategic Marketing; Marketing Director for the Business School.

“My big focus is going to be on recruitment for the Business School, and developing a social media strategy, which I think is going to revolutionise the way we talk to students.” He explains this is because “we know that students only want to be spoken to really through social media... not brochures and posters”.

He is very exited about the new project that the Business School have. “This summer in July we are going to launch a summer school. We are going to launch it under the heading of Strategic Marketing. It will to be an intensive, one month course. In total... it adds up to about 170 hours. It’s going to be open to Imperial undergraduates, and international undergraduates.” The course will be residential, and costs £2000, which Love says “believe it or not that’s competitive!”. The first pilot will have over 50 students and he is sure it will be successful.

Why are you doing this at all is the next question I ask. Love answers that it serves several purposes. “It’s a fantastic advertisement for College. I’ve got to tell the truth: it’s a revenue stream – we’re going to make cash out of it. But the main thing is the College recognition. We are heavily trading on the reputation of Imperial around the world.” It’s already been launched on the web and has had 2000 hits in a week. He says it is open to Imperial students, but expects mostly American, Indian and Chinese students. It will be “equivalent to three USA credits or 7 ETCS”. “The incentives are two things: one is credit from their home university... the other thing you get of course is you get to go to London for a whole month.” “We want to employ some ambassadors to help look after these guys in the social playground”. Discussing Imperial students he touches on the possibility of a discount saying “I’d like to”.

Love is proud of the Business School and its reach. “We teach nearly 3000 students”. On the subject of the Horizons Business course, he explains that the 8 week programme has been lectured to 800+ students and is the most popular course. He says that this is setting them up for second and third year. “In the past we had something called BEST... I think that got kind of tired, and we’ve done a major reengineering exercise with science and engineering science. The new programme will be called Business for Professional Engineers and Science. We are extending the number of subjects from five to nine”. New options will include Business Strategy, Marketing, Sustainable business, amongst others. They will be for credit and electives, with 15 hours of face-to-face and five hours online. He says that this is “huge” as they are expecting about 2000 students to register for those courses. He also mentions the intercollated masters that students can take.

Love discusses the way that the Business School can reach any undergraduate at Imperial. “If you join Imperial College, as a scientist, engineer, or medic, when you finish you’ve got lots of additional things on your CV. You’ve done a Business foundation course under Horizons, you’d have taken a series of electives, you may have taken a year in management.” He says “what we’re doing is give someone something additional... like the humanities, you want to do a language, that’s a skill”. He explains that employers look at the business knowledge and that these courses will “get them huge jobs”.

“More and more business people now, when they look at CVs, they’re looking at personal statements, they are looking to see what people have done outside of their specialist subject.”

Love ends with a tour of the Business School’s online learning platform. It’s pretty amazing and I wish I’d had that as an undergraduate. He jovially says goodbye to me. I walk out, realising that I never did any Business School courses, and therefore can feel slightly hipster in a few years time when everyone is.