Columbia Business School Looks Towards the Future

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed B-schools forever. Smaller class sizes and GMAT waivers are just a few of the changes that came about due to the pandemic. But Columbia Business School dean Costis Maglaras predicts business education has much more growth down the road. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Maglaras highlighted how Columbia has embraced change and what growth looks like for the B-school beyond 2022.

A NEW CAMPUS

In January 2022, Columbia will welcome students to its new Manhattanville campus in New York City’s West Harlem neighborhood. The expansion has played a critical role in Columbia’s growth strategy for the future.

“We have been space-constrained for quite some time, and we were quite ambitious in our thinking of how we’re going to execute on that expansion,” Maglaras tells Fortune. “It’s a modern sort-of airy, collaborative, social building where our lives and our students’ lives will be drastically changed and improved. There’s a lot of energy and optimism.”

Maglaras says the new campus will provide the perfect environment for how students collaborate today and tomorrow.

“[Digital] transformation has changed the nature of the jobs and the respective organizations,” he tells Fortune. “That by itself brought with it some collaborative work that MBA graduates engage in with engineers, with data scientists, with designers, with architects. This type of collaborative work, innovative work, and experiential learning is something that we will be able to really do extremely well in this new campus.”

THE ROLE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

When asked what’s likely to transform businesses in the future, Maglaras says it’ll be climate change. It’s something Maglaras believes transform our way of life—from how we build to what we eat. And it’s also something that Columbia intends on preparing for.

“The location that we have, the campus that we have, and the new climate school that we have here at Columbia University leave a drastic opportunity for us,” Maglaras tells Fortune. “That’s something that we’re investing in quite a bit because that’s going to be the future driver of change in businesses, and as a result, in business education.”

On top of the new campus, Maglaras says the B-school is developing a new curriculum that will prepare students for business transformation due to climate change.

“We’re investing quite a bit of resources and time developing new curriculum in that space, enhancing research activities in that area about how businesses, how consumer psychology, and how finance is going to enter into that game,” he tells Fortune. “Then finally we’re deepening our ties with other parts of the university to best explore both the challenge, but also be part of the solution.”

Read the full interview at Fortune.

Sources: Fortune, Poets and Quants