will not judge you against what you say but what you do and it’s the same thing with teaching, so that’s why we need to be role models for these values.” In the HEC Lausanne dean’s mind, accountability is now a key attribute for today’s leaders. “I think it’s really important to take responsibility for your actions, which goes with integrity,” she reasons, circling back to another of the school’s RICE values. Scaling up interactive & interdisciplinary learning The transversal courses Schmid Mast mentions, meanwhile, have been introduced into the bachelor’s programme as part of a suite of changes implemented since the start of the 2023/24 academic year. Facilitating these courses’ use of groupwork among large cohorts of students is a further innovation, known as the SCALE (student-centred and active learning environment) room. This is a space designed to maximise interactivity, with capacity for 150 people across three partitioned zones that are interconnected visually and audibly, using touch screens and a sound system capable of covering zones simultaneously or separately. “You can project information through these different entities, allowing one person to do a very interactive teaching session without having a lot of co-teachers present,” Schmid Mast advises. A further initiative at bachelor’s level is to ramp up work experience and internship opportunities, via a
“Each workshop is dedicated to one of the values and this also foreshadows what will happen in the curriculum,” Schmid Mast expounds. “For example, in the rigour workshop, we invite them to do a self- assessment of their maths and statistics ability because our programme is very much focused on these areas in comparison to other business schools. They can then come to a tutorial if they see any gaps, highlighting the approach we expect from them.” Schmid Mast says that the school’s values project has helped guide its direction since she became dean in 2021. “When I came into office, defining these values was one of the first things we worked on and that helped us to make decisions about courses and which way to go.” As an example, she highlights how collaboration’s inclusion as a core value led the school to identify that its bachelor’s programme did not adequately encompass collaborative groupwork until the third year, precipitating a change to the curriculum. “Now, we have several of what we call ‘transversal courses’ that go over one year and allow students to work in small groups, mixing up our teaching format and introducing students to the positives and negatives of groupwork,” she enthuses. There is also a staunch belief that values are increasingly essential to modern leadership. “We need people who have a moral compass and who are transparent about their values as the basis of their decision-making,” Schmid Mast remarks. “People
Left: HEC Lausanne has 15 centres, institutes and research laboratories Above right: first-year students are introduced to the school’s key values of rigour, integrity, collaboration and entrepreneurship during onboarding days
22 Business Impact • ISSUE 6 • 2025
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