Since its creation 40 years ago, NEOMA is part of the International Partnership of Business Schools network (IPBS), a consortium of 13 leading business schools in Europe, North and Latin America. Céline Davesne, NEOMA Associate Dean for Programmes & International, recently named Vice-President of IPBS, highlights the advantages of belonging to this academic network.

The strength of a network
The experience offered to the partner schools includes notably the sharing of what we call “our best practices”, with in particular 2 annual rotating meetings. In addition to these meetings, there are real synergies on the curriculum plan, various innovations, etc.
As all of this takes place with the Deans or Associate deans of each member school in attendance, it makes it possible to quickly process and implement the observed opportunities. The discussion subjects are particularly large in scope.

A shared immersive international approach
The 13 IPBS member schools share the same immersive international approach. It gives each school the opportunity to offer its students high-quality, dual-degree academic exchange programmes, while also receiving in exchange high-potential students from other member schools on their campuses. These exchanges provide real multicultural value to our campuses!
This first-rate international academic network offers a wide range of opportunities first and foremost to the students in our CESEM programme. Twelve of the fifteen CESEM partners are members of the IPBS, located around the world: Dublin (Ireland), Lancaster (United Kingdom), Madrid (Spain), Reutlingen (Germany), Piacenza (Italy), Boston (MA, USA), Raleigh (NC, USA), Elon (NC,USA), San Diego (CA, USA), Puebla (Mexico), São Paulo (Brazil) and St. Catharines (Canada). CESEM also has partners in Moscow (Russia), Beijing (China), Nagoya (Japan) and Breda (The Netherlands).

Cutting-edge pedagogic practices: example of “Entrepreneurs across borders”
Finally, the IPBS network is an excellent laboratory for pedagogic innovations!
For example, during the last conference this past October on NEOMA campus in Reims, the focus was on careers. The Career centres from the different partners were invited, in order to capitalise on the expertise and practices of the different schools. It allowed us to maximise our student’s internship and job opportunities and experiences. Thus, aside from the classic and long lasting academic immersion formats of our current exchange programmes, we have been developing new collaboration patterns. For example, the implementation of the innovative plan “Entrepreneurs across borders”. Our school launched this programme one year ago, to help incubated students enter a semester exchange programme in the incubator of a partner school.

The close ties and mutual trust between members of the IPBS network clearly give rise to particularly innovative collaborations that always benefit the learner.

>read more about IPBS, International Partnership of Business Schools
>read more about NEOMA CESEM programme