New Centre first of its kind in Canada
TORONTO, February 6, 2009 – York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School and Schulich School of Business, two world-class professional schools, today marked the beginning of a new era in Canadian business and law education and scholarship with the launch of the Jay and Barbara Hennick Centre for Business and Law.
The Hennick Centre – which has been made possible by a generous gift of $3 million from Jay and Barbara Hennick – will promote and develop joint business and law scholarship, education and outreach in Canada.
Jay Hennick, a York graduate in sociology (BA’78) with a law degree from the University of Ottawa, is Founder and CEO of FirstService Corporation, one of North America’s largest globally-diversified real estate service companies. In 2001, he was named Canada’s CEO of the year by Canadian Business magazine. Barbara Hennick is a chartered accountant (CA’83) with a Bachelor of Commerce degree (BCom’80) from the University of Toronto.
Central to the Hennick Centre’s contributions to joint business and law education and scholarship will be the existing LLB/MBA program (recently renamed the JD/MBA) that was jointly established by Osgoode and Schulich in the mid-70s and the new Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at Osgoode and Schulich established in 2006. The Centre will play an important role in raising awareness of the need for such education and scholarship in today’s complex, globalized world. Toward this end, it will undertake a wide range of comprehensive, multi-faceted initiatives involving students, faculty, practising lawyers, business and legal community leaders and public policy-makers.
Donors Jay and Barbara Hennick, whose generosity in helping to create the Hennick Centre is the latest of many examples of their giving back to the community, believe that without basic training and education in both business and law, future leaders from the legal profession, as well as from the private, public and non-profit sectors, will not be adequately prepared to succeed.
“It is our hope the new Hennick Centre will bring together the best and brightest students, scholars and practitioners from both business and law to prepare Canada’s leaders of tomorrow to compete, win and contribute at home and abroad,” said Jay and Barbara Hennick.
“The Schulich School of Business integrates global and triple bottom line principles, including social, economic and sustainable considerations, across all programs. This ensures that graduates understand and can work within the multiple frameworks that impact management decision-making, including legal, ethical and governance frameworks. The research, teaching and outreach activities of the new Hennick Centre will make important contributions to our understanding of these interrelated frameworks,” said Dezsö J. Horváth, Dean of the Schulich School of Business.
“For more than a century, Osgoode Hall Law School has led the most important developments in Canadian legal education. And today is no exception,” said Osgoode Dean Patrick Monahan. “Along with our core legal and business curriculum, the Hennick Centre will provide a unique offering for students, and help prepare them to compete in today’s knowledge-based society.”
Edward Waitzer, Jarislowsky Dimma Mooney Chair in Corporate Governance at Osgoode and Schulich and a Senior Partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP, is the inaugural Director of the Hennick Centre. Osgoode Professor Poonam Puri, Co-Research Director of Canada’s Expert Panel on Securities Regulation, and Schulich Professor Andrew Crane, George R. Gardiner Professor of Business Ethics, are the Associate Directors.
The Hennick Centre will benefit from the knowledge and experience of its high-profile advisory board of senior lawyers and business leaders from Canada and abroad. Board members include, among others, the Honourable James Farley, Partner, McCarthy Tétrault LLP; Edward Sonshine, CEO, RioCan; Marianne Harris, Managing Director and President, Merrill Lynch Canada Inc.; David Robottom, Group Vice-President – Law, Enbridge Inc.; Terry Kawaja, Managing Director, GCA Savvian Advisors; Rob Wildeboer, Executive Chairman and Secretary, Martinrea International Inc.; Barbara Stymiest, COO, Royal Bank; Dale Lastman, Chair, Goodmans LLP; and Mark Young, Chair, Cassels Brock LLP.
The Hennick Centre will become the new home of the Canadian Foundation for the Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR), a non-profit, independent national organization representing the interests of Canadian investors in securities regulation. Under the Centre’s auspices, an Investor Protection Seminar for third-year law students and business journalists has also been established. In the fall of this year, the Hennick Centre will host a multi-stakeholder expert consultation for the UN Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The creation of the pioneering Hennick Centre will strengthen Osgoode’s relationship with New York University (NYU) and its Pollock Center for Law and Business, one of the few precedents for the Hennick Centre. As well, a number of exciting initiatives involving business and legal scholarship, outreach and education are under consideration.
The Jay and Barbara Hennick gift will help to support the Centre throughout its critical first five years of operation. At the same time, it will make possible the creation of new endowed awards for top entering and graduating students from the Joint Osgoode and Schulich law and business program. As well, a new Hennick Medal for Career Achievement will be awarded annually to recognize distinguished international business leaders with an education in both business and law.
The launch of the Hennick Centre took place February 6th in Toronto in conjunction with the Osgoode and Schulich LLB/MBA Students’ Association 12th annual conference, World Markets in Transition: Canada’s Opportunities and Challenges, whose title sponsor was Fogler, Rubinoff LLP. The conference featured Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as keynote speaker. This is the second centre of excellence to be launched at Osgoode within the last four months. The first was the new IP Law and Technology Program.
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For further information, please contact:
Virginia Corner Suzanne Firth
Communications Manager Director, Communications
Osgoode Hall Law School Schulich School of Business
416-736-5820 416-219-3021
vcorner@osgoode.yorku.ca sfirth@schulich.yorku.ca
About Osgoode
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University has a proud history of more than 100 years of leadership and innovation in legal education and legal scholarship. A total of about 900 students are enrolled in Osgoode’s three-year Juris Doctor (JD) Program. Osgoode’s Graduate Program in Law, with its thesis-based Master of Laws (LLM) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programs, is also the largest in the country and one of the most highly regarded in North America. The Osgoode Professional Development Program, which operates out of its own centre in downtown Toronto and is unique in Canada, offers numerous specialized part-time LLM Programs that run on varying cycles as well as Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses.
About Schulich
Known as Canada’s Global Business School™, the Schulich School of Business in Toronto is ranked among the world’s leading business schools by a number of global surveys. Schulich’s MBA program is ranked #1 in Canada by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist (EIU), Expansión (a Time Warner publication) and the Aspen Institute (a US-based business think tank), and its EMBA program is ranked #1 in Canada by the Financial Times of London. For complete ranking details, please visit www.schulich.yorku.ca.
Global, innovative and diverse, Schulich offers business programs year-round at two Toronto campuses – its new state-of-the-art complex on York University’s main campus and its downtown Miles S. Nadal Management Centre located in the heart of the city’s financial district. The School also operates representative offices in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India; Seoul, South Korea; and Moscow, Russia. Schulich offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate business degrees that lead to careers in the private, public and non-profit sectors, and has over 20,000 alumni working in over 90 countries. Schulich pioneered Canada’s first International MBA (IMBA) and International BBA (iBBA) degrees, as well as North America’s first ever cross-border executive MBA degree, the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA. Schulich’s Executive Education Centre provides executive development programs annually to more than 16,000 executives in Canada and abroad.
