P&Q’s Exit Interview: Susan Christoffersen Built Rotman’s Future. Now She’s Handing Off The Keys

When Susan Christoffersen took over as dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management in July 2021, the world was not exactly cooperating. The pandemic had just loosened its grip – barely – and a school that had been running programs and building community across a physically distanced campus was still figuring out how to come back. Christoffersen, who had spent the previous five years as vice-dean, knew Rotman well. What she hadn’t quite bargained for was Omicron.

“We sort of were planning on bringing people back and then you had Omicron, which hit, which sent people sort of back,” she said in a recent interview with Poets&Quants. “So it was this on, off inability to plan – uncertainty – that made that very challenging.”

She got through it. Five years later, Christoffersen is stepping down on June 30, the end of her term, having overseen what amounts to a wholesale reimagination of Rotman’s program portfolio. Across her two roles – three new graduate programs as vice-dean, three more as dean – she built out a diversified slate of offerings that she believes will give her successor far more room to maneuver than she had. She also oversaw a reinvention of Rotman Commerce that has driven applications up 50 to 60 percent over six years, to roughly 10,000 applications annually for 800 spots.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Christoffersen won’t be going far. Since January 1, she has been serving concurrently as the University of Toronto’s new Presidential Advisor on Innovation Investments – a role focused on attracting venture capital to the university and accelerating commercialization of its research. In July, that becomes her full-time job. She’s also planning to return to the classroom, something she said she genuinely missed during her deanship.

“As a professor, you get to be part of that as well,” she said, referring to the student relationships she feared losing. “I don’t think I’m going to be missing out on that too much.”

The melancholy, she said, runs alongside the excitement. She knows the strategic bets she made – shrinking the MBA to sharpen its positioning, building out pre-experience programs, investing in leadership development – won’t show up in the rankings for another four or five years. “It kind of kills me that it’s going to be that time,” she said. “But I know that we made the right decisions for the school.”

‘CHALLENGE CREATES OPPORTUNITY’: THE P&Q INTERVIEW WITH TORONTO ROTMAN’S SUSAN CHRISTOFFERSEN

Poets&Quants: You took over at Rotman in July 2021. What did leading a major business school through that period of disruption reveal to you about what Rotman actually is at its core?

Susan Christoffersen: I think one of the things that you really appreciate when people are working apart from one another is just the strength of the community. And the fact that people coming together – how joyous it was to see people who I hadn’t seen for a year, back in person. That was a real focal point for me at the very beginning of my tenure, but then throughout the five years – really about building that community. While it didn’t take long for us all to become sequestered in our homes, it took a long time, and it’s still impacting us, in terms of how we come back, how we teach and learn, how we connect with one another. That has just radically changed.

P&Q: You championed six new graduate programs across your two roles. What was driving that – was it a strategic vision you came in with, or were you responding to what you saw changing in what students and employers actually needed?

Christoffersen: It was a combination of both. Challenge creates opportunity, and a willingness for people to learn. There was a part of the market that we were just not touching, which was the pre-experience market. You were increasingly seeing a lot of students wanting to get that one year of graduate education post four years of undergraduate, and wanting some specialized knowledge. So there was definitely a strategic piece. But I think also, the MBA – seeing that there are stresses in that market, and how we need to evolve as a school. The strategy has been working on what’s our portfolio of programs and what’s the optimal size of our MBA program, given that portfolio. We were heavily dependent on MBA tuition. And so we needed to evolve.

P&Q: Reimagining Rotman Commerce and deepening ties across the university were clearly priorities. How hard was it to bring people along, and where did you encounter the most resistance?

Christoffersen: Actually, we have a very strong and unique relationship with our Faculty of Arts and Science. Anytime you have a large partner like that, you have to start talking about negotiating, sharing of revenues – that creates natural frictions. But my focus was always on the student experience, and what is in the best interest of students. I really fought hard for providing students with as much flexibility in their degrees while making sure they could get those deep dives. Internally, I did not get as much pushback from faculty here. They could see the real importance of strengthening the undergraduate program. And I’m very glad we did, because as we’re transitioning in terms of our graduate programs, the undergraduate has become more and more important.

P&Q: Executive education was another area you invested in heavily. How significant was that to the overall strategic picture?

Christoffersen: It was a big part of the strategic positioning of the school, and I think it needs to be. We’ve increased executive education by about two and a half times since I came in. And I think that’s really important, because it’s another lever – it connects us to the business community, it keeps our faculty engaged with real-world problems, and it generates revenue that gives you flexibility. It’s one of those things that doesn’t always get the attention that the degree programs do, but it’s absolutely part of having a healthy, diversified school.

P&Q: Higher education is facing real headwinds – enrollment pressures, funding uncertainty, questions about the value of graduate degrees. What did you put in place that you believe is most important for whoever comes next to build on?

Christoffersen: The thing I’m really proud of is the diversification in our portfolio of programs. While so much of our reputation is still dependent on our MBA, we now have many more levers to pull. That allows whoever comes next to really double down on the quality of the MBA program – to make it more bespoke, bring in high-quality students, revamp that curriculum – without being financially dependent on it. We can’t do that if we don’t have any other levers. I’m also really proud of the Master of Management program, and this idea of stackability – a one-year Master of Management for non-business undergrads, and a one-year MBA for students with a business background. We’ve even started sending deferred admission offers to our top Rotman Commerce graduates: get your three years of work experience, and you’ve got a spot waiting. We’re competing not just on scholarship money but on relationship.

P&Q: Let’s talk about the MBA’s long-term future – not just at Rotman but everywhere. Do you think the two-year residential MBA survives?

Christoffersen: I do think there’s going to be massive disruption. I sincerely believe there is still a need for MBA training. But the problem that’s happened over the last two or three decades is that it’s become more of a commodity, as opposed to a premier, pinnacle degree that’s teaching you the skills of leadership. We need to go back to basics – that’s what the degree was meant for. There are basic business skills, but it’s those leadership skills, training people that you really want to see in senior leadership positions. So I think that’s the revisioning: there is still a really important place for this in our economy.

Now, the two-year question – that is a big one for me. Are people willing to take two years out? We saw a lot of pressure to compress everything into one year. That’s where I think this idea of stackability is interesting – people after their undergrad, when opportunity costs aren’t as high, do a Master of Management, but then come back and really focus on those leadership skills later on. As opposed to trying to squish everything into one year, which just wasn’t in our brand. The world is changing, and it’s not clear the job outcomes coming after two years are as certain as they may have been. And I think you can see in places like Harvard a mentality shift – you used to come in and get a job; increasingly, the idea is you come in and maybe create jobs.

P&Q: That leads naturally to AI. How well-positioned is Rotman to deal with what’s coming, and what are your programmatic responses?

Christoffersen: We set out a task force last year. In many ways we’re in a good position – AI basically started down the road from us, in our computer science department. Many of our professors have been seeing this from something close to ground zero, seeing those early companies coming out of computer science. So we have a group of professors who are way out on the tail, thinking about it, innovating, writing books that are helping organizations understand the impact. But then I have a whole group of others who are not there. And how do we bring them along? How do we create that cross-pollination? One of the first things we’ve been doing is communities of practice – having people share what new things they’re doing in their classes, how they’re addressing academic integrity, redesigning programs.

But I think the area where we have real distinction, and where we should lean in, is our self-development and leadership development labs. I almost think of it as repositioning them as human leadership labs – because in a world of AI, we need to double down on the human skills. Those are completely human. The other thing that’s become very clear from the task force is that the days of students sitting and listening to a professor read off slides are probably coming to an end. What students want is to be interacting – with us, and with one another. A lot of them will say, I’m not sure why I’m coming in; I can look this up on ChatGPT. So it’s really about elevating the types of questions we’re asking, assuming they can get the foundational material, and asking them to engage with the higher-order questions. But that’s a hard change to bring into an institution that probably isn’t as set up for change as it needs to be.

P&Q: After a decade of leading people and programs at Rotman, what are you most curious about in this next chapter – and what will you miss most about being dean?

Christoffersen: What excites me about the new role is that it enables me to use my skills, my curiosity, my desire to make things better – but doing it at a bigger level, something like the University of Toronto. And I see it as being very meaningful for the country right now. There is so much potential for the university to attract capital to invest in early-stage ventures and accelerate commercialization. As for what I’ll miss – I will absolutely miss working so closely with the leadership team here, and being part of an institutional journey. And the students. Seeing them at graduation. But what’s hard, moving into this other role, is that I can see the possibilities. And you want to be pulling the levers to make those possibilities happen. Somebody else will be doing that now. What I hope is that I’ve laid the groundwork for someone to come in and make their mark on it.

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