Zurich, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) - According to 20 Minutes, several students who have used Facebook to write disparaging remarks about teachers are about to find themselves in trouble with the law in Zurich: a legal complaint has reportedly been filed, but it is not clear who has filed charges, and against whom.
Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Girls “working” in veterinarian offices, at international organizations, at federal offices, and even at GenevaLunch. It is not child labour, but rather part of the eighth National Girls Day.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Students at Swiss high schools who are preparing to take their maturité national university entrance examinations are “satisfactorily” prepared for Swiss university programmes, a federal study shows, but they are not equally prepared.
Ernesto Bertarelli, Patrick Aebischer, Sylviane Borel, Daniel Borel at the announcement of EPFL's new Center for Neuroprostheses, Lausanne
Lausanne, Vaud (GenevaLunch) - EPFL is creating five chairs as part of a new “world class” Center for Neuroprostheses. These are devices embedded in the body to repair neurological deficiencies, from hearing and vision problems to a potentially wider range of disabilities. The new centre, which opens in January 2009, will be the first in the world to bring together under one roof a multidisciplinary team from the fields of neuroscience, engineering and information technology, for research in this area.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - When it comes to developing scientists and engineers, Switzerland lags behind other European nations, so the Swiss federal government has decided it is time to implement new measures to remain competitive.
Geneva, Switzerland (swissinfo) - Researchers at the University of Geneva, whose Neurocenter is holding its annual meeting today, have recently made strides in understanding how the brain’s organization is affected by learning and memory functions.
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) - Ecal (University of Art and Design of Lausanne) has begun its new master’s degree, a one-year programme in luxury design that aims to fill a gap in the design world, with a focus on sustainable development and new technologies as part of design work at the highest level.
Lucerne, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) - Lucern voters 28 September strongly (60%) rejected a national schooling plan that has been hammered out and agreed to by the country’s cantonal education departments, raising the question of the impact now on other cantons, which have begun to adopt the programme.
Robert Spencer, director general, European campuses, Webster University
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - When Robert Spencer moved to Geneva in 1995 to take on the job of president of the Geneva campus of Webster University, the school considered itself international, with students who represented 75 nationalities. But two-thirds of them came from Geneva and the student body of 300 to 350 students lived off-campus; there was little sense of community and businesses in the area often had no clear picture of what kind of education the school offered.
Deniz Saral, head of the business programme at Webster in Geneva.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Webster University this week celebrates its 30th birthday in Europe and in Geneva with a reception and a gala dinner for invited guests, but among professors and the 500 students the big celebration is for the renewal for 10 years of two key accreditations. Months of preparation and discussion lie behind the accreditations by the North Central Association Higher Learning Commission (NCAHLC) and the Associaton of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP). Read more…
Lake Geneva region, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The University of Geneva (French site lists courses) has joined EPFL in seeing a 15% increase over the previous year in new undergraduate students, as 2008-2009 school year classes start this week. Geneva, which has some 14,500 students, has registered more than 3,000 in its first year class, with the college of social and economics studies the most popular option. Read more…
Back to school Monday at EPFL, with construction on the new Rolex Learning Center advancing. Photo taken in June.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, opens its doors to students Monday with three new master’s degree options and a 15% increase in first-year and preparatory year students, who will number 1,400. The number of women, who are 26.5% of the students, has risen by 0.9%. Read more…
Lausanne, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) - The number of students opting for a master’s degree at the University of Lausanne, who did their undergraduate studies elsewhere is well above the Read more…
Geneva, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) - AS Geneva tests its second batch of candidates this year for its police force, a surprising statistic has surfaced, reports 20 Minutes: two-thirds of them don’t make it through because they fail the dictée (dictation), where they are allowed 10 spelling mistakes. The reason: a large part of police work is writing reports and since some of these may end up in court, they need to be correctly written.
Goms Valley, Valais, Switzerland (romandie/ats, Fre) - To melt or not to melt, that is the big question, when it comes to glaciers. Students from Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University in Mayence are working on the basis that with a little help from humans, glaciers can not melt, or at least the melt rate can slow down. To test their theory they have used steel pegs to hold down a 15 metre wide and 3 metre high protective device, like a tent, over part of the Rhone glacier, at 2,300 metres. The idea is to stop the cold winds that blow from the glacier down towards the Rhone Valley below.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - PricewaterhouseCoopers has donated $4 million to UNHCR, the Geneva-based refugee arm of the United Nations, to build schools for displaced children who have fled fighting in Darfur, Sudan. The donation is the largest single gift from a business that the UN body has received.
Switzerland (GeneveLunch) - Switzerland’s national holiday, the first of August, will have an extra bit of a light and shadows show, in addition to the usual fireworks: a solar eclipse. The eclipse begins shortly before 09:00 and lasts about an hour. If you aren’t looking for it, you might miss it, since this is only a 2.42% eclipse, but if you are planning to watch it, federal government health department warns, be sure to buy adequate equipment at a pharmacy. The cheap cardboard glasses are not considered safe and children and older people should be watched carefully.
Details of the eclipse and a history of the past 500 years of eclipses near Geneva.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli, 50, has been named vice-president for Innovation and technology transfer at EPFL, the federal polytechnic school in Lausanne. She is currently executive vice president of business development for the Kudelski Group, a world leader in encryption technologies and digital systems. Corboud Fumagalli will pursue the projects initiated by Jan-Anders Månson,
says the EPH board press release, focusing particularly on developing EPFL’s Innovation District, the
Science Park and partnerships with industry." She is an economist, specialized in media, and has helped Kudelski develop its mobile phone business. From 1996 to 2000 she worked for Swisscom, where she oversaw the development of its online activities.
Her contract runs from 1 September 2008 to 2012.
Photo, Alain Herzog, courtesy EPFL
Photos: © EPFL, Alain Herzog. Click on images to view larger. View EPFL’s collection of 71 superb photos of the concrete pouring!
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - EPFL, the polytechnic institute, was the scene of an unusual all-night, all-day project over the weekend, with concrete being poured for the Rolex Learning Center: 4,300m2 of it in one go, a massive undertaking by construction standards. Another 7,000m2 has already been poured since construction began in August 2007.
Photo, Ellen Wallace: stairway to heaven: the ramp for the new building, before walls are added, offers a spectacular open view of the French Alps. June 2008.
EPFL has had one of the liveliest entrances of any school in Switzerland in recent months, with the construction of the school’s new centre taking place at the main gate. It will serve as library, meeting and work space, cafeteria and more when it opens in early 2010. The unusual design of the complex, by Japanese architectural firm Sanaa, has created a strangely busy building site, with much activity but none of the usual flat slab plus walls being raised as time has gone on. Instead, a team of 50 specialists has been testing and making elaborate preparations for the one-of-a-kind sloping and waving floors.
Another 70 journeymen will join them for the next stages of the operation.
Photos below, Ellen Wallace: construction work on a sunny day in June 2008. Mesh fences and windows for peeking in have allowed glimpses of the work in progress.
Lausanne, Switzerland (20 Minutes, Fre) - The architecture building at EPFL, the federal polytechnic school, broke out in fire Sunday evening.
Investigators are seeking the cause of the fire that injured no one but that caused heavy damage from smoke and flames to the top floor of the building, with water damage from firefighters to the floor below.
Pays de Gex, France (GenevaLunch) - Concerns over a shortage of regular teachers in the Pays de Gex are lingering, with school out, as parents wonder who will be there to teach their children come September. Budget cuts under the Sarkozy government mean 70 fewer teachers in the Ain Department, to which the Pays de Gex belongs, according to a story published in Le Temps today. A parents group in the region was formed in June, with a blog to keep parents informed of developments. The group says 370 days of classes without teachers were not replaced this year. Anne Glusker, who contributes to GenevaLunch and whose son attends school in Divonne, says "There’s a huge problem in the Pays de Gex with a shortage of substitutes," which led to several demonstrations by parents at the end of the school year.
Part one: Why a family goes to school
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Last Friday 37 family business students at IMD in Lausanne, one of Europe’s top business schools, packed up and headed home with new ideas about moving the family company into the future. The group was the latest to follow a week-long programme for "global leading family businesses," according to IMD-Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch Family Business Research Center co-director Joachim Schwass.
In an era of giant multinationals and publicly-owned companies family businesses may seem like an anachronism, but nothing is further from the truth, argues Schwass. The public corporation as we know it goes back to the early 1900s, he says. At that time two Harvard professors wrote about the need to separate ownership from management.
These new public companies powered business through the 20th century but in the last 5-10 years we have been seeing constraints on the corporate system, he believes, with demands for limits on huge salaries and boards being called to greater accountability. UBS, for example, today announced the immediate implementation of new governance rules that draw a clear line between its executive board and its management.
"Families don’t need this heavy board structure. You trust yourself, you know what risks to take and you get to know your business over time. And your thinking is very long term, the next generation and beyond - you want to give back and you have a knowledge base. So we’re really coming back to the roots of our capitalist system. The rewards are higher for everyone. Family businessses are taking back the role that governments are finding increasingly difficult to manage.
"The problem is that family businesses bring the family and the business together and if they think ahead, plan ahead, their system can work, but it doesn’t happen automatically."
Age 50 is a critical time for many company founders, Schwass points out, the moment when the owner starts to see the next generation as just power-driven, and that can cause problems. "The first generation needs to be able to say, ‘here is a platform and it’s your choice’ and then motivate them." Schwass laughs at a common scenario, where for years a parent "comes home every night and complains about the unions or this and that, someone stealing business - and then they turn to the children and say, ‘and some day this will all be yours!’ Too many conversations are badly handled."
The lessons learned by families who turn to IMD for help apply equally well to most family businesses, he says. For a start, such firms tend to follow a predictable development pattern. Typically, one person founds the company and he or she remains the indispensable "I" at the centre. The second generation is often the children, siblings: a small family that functions as a team, marked by a need for equality. By the third generation, the family has grown to include cousins, and an "Us and them" attitude has developed, where inequality becomes part of the company’s operating system.
"You’ve got built-in conflicts and about 80% of family companies fail" when the founder passes on the company, says Schwass. "In the second generation, the team is characterized as very close" but by the third generation, with cousins, differences stand out. This is hard for families to deal with because "in an ‘Us’ culture you’re punished if you’re different but in ‘Us and them’ it’s good to be different. A company by this stage needs that wider pool of more diversified talent and personalities. Another 10% of companies fail at this point, says Schwass. "Once the cousins are brought in you have to have governance." IMD tries to help them make what Schwass calls a paradign shift. "Where a family sees names and history, we see structures, strategy."
Schwass himself is part of a family business so his input is based on
both academic work and personal experience. "Globalization and the
Internet have done a lot to every company. I was doing business in
Australia, China and elsewhere and I constantly travelled. I always had to go to them, but now
clients are brought to us." This impact of a changing world, coupled
with new research, might make it seem that family businesses are facing
new challenges, but Schwass says this is not at the root of problems.
"Underneath,
fundamentally, the needs of family-owned businesses have not changed
because they are based on human issues, values and behaviour. The
problems arise because you are directly involved, either as an owner,
or family member or manager."
IMD starts by helping its family business students understand why they need to avoid building their companies around an individual. At the outset it may be normal for the company’s capital to be primarily the person who founded it, so a "revolution" is needed to make that one person-centred approach "redundant." The business needs to shift, using "evolution" to create a system that will replace the individual, at the same time making a strong commitment to solid growth. A new programme focuses on helping families make the generational transition.
The 20-year-old Family Business Center uses its research base and
case studies to help companies understand this. Schwass says the
research is far richer than it was even 5-10 years ago, and it is
increasingly international.
IMD worked closely, for example, with an Indian company, the Murugappa Group based in Chennai, India, which rethought its structure. "If you look at the Indian family-owned business model there might be six sons, so the founder sets up six businesses." Trust and equality are important in Indian society and this structure reflects it, he believes. But typically, once the founder is gone the companies, previously closely linked, start splitting up. In Mulogappa’s case, the family’s success has led to it winning one of IMD’s family business awards.
Lake Geneva region, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Today, 27 June, is the last official day of school for thousands of children in the city of Geneva.
Photo: Students and parents at St Jean school in Geneva enjoying their end of year party.
For the past few days elementary school kids have been preparing year-end festivities that included school dances on Thursday 26 June. Thousands of children in several cities around the area also participated in traditional "graduation parades." In Geneva and Lausanne children dressed up in costumes and walked alongside teachers and parents. However, the party is not over yet. The city of Geneva invites all students to participate in the "fête des écoles primaires", starting at 18:00 today in Park des Bastions. Vaud students finish a week later, 4 July.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Prince Albert II of Monaco was in Geneva Friday to receive an honorary doctorate from the International University of Geneva in recognition of his commitment to the conservation of nature and the environment. Patrick Odier, managing partner at Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch was also awarded an honorary doctorate for his dedication to sustainable development in the finance sector. The degrees were conferred during the graduation ceremonies at the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Geneva, where 43 students from 27 different countries were awarded bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Photos by Patricia Goldschmid. Top left, Prince Albert of Monaco with Claude Martins, the university chanceller and former head of the WWF. Top right, Patrick Odier.
Evionnaz, Valais, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) - Schools in Evionnaz and local authorities have been taking preventive measures to ensure that students do not play high-risk games around train tracks. The move came after an adult observed a youngster standing on the rails and waiting until the last minute to jump out of the way of an oncoming high-speed train. The extent to which such games are being played is unknown, but it is clear that there is a lack of understanding, at the very least knowing that trains cannot stop quickly, says a CFF official. The Swiss train company has taken a series of preventive measures, including working with schools to educate students to dangers around rail lines.
Swiss train school visits, calendar
