On June 30th 2009, Ceram Business School and the ESC Lille School of Management announced their merger declaring their intention to launch an ambitious project unique in France: a business school aimed at training the deciders of tomorrow’s world, a more responsible and more ethical world, where interconnected hubs will be working together in the knowledge economy.
For the first time in France, two high calibre institutions have decided to achieve this ambition together.
Our new institution holds three core ideas in common:
- Firstly we know that your future lies more and more in your capacity to understand how to make the most of a multicultural and international world
- Secondly, we are convinced that the combined strength of ourrespective institutions and their different localities guarantee our continuing international development
- Finally, we know that our sharing these strengths gives us the leading edge in deploying our pioneering international project.
To sum up, now is the ideal time for both schools to move on to create a new identity forged from our respective DNA and our common values. We want to create a school for leadership with campuses worldwide. We want to train future decision makers who understand their environment, who can adapt to it and initiate sustainable action. We
want our school to be an international reference among business schools: a reference which is innovative and different with a clear vision of the knowledge economy as the new business environment.
From this is born:
SKEMA: a name with universal values
The word comes from the ancient Greek skhêma signifying a form, a figure or the constitution of an object. This gave the Latin schema, and later the French schéma or scheme. For the school, the name refers to the new mental schemas and methodologies which we must adopt if we are to succeed in the business world of the 21st century.
SKEMA, the Management School for the Knowledge Economy
This clear statement of the school’s mission ensures worldwide visibility while reinforcing our basis in business education. The atypical and eye-catching letter K conveys the brand’s strength and its ambition to construct knowledge through innovative teaching and learning. It shows also our break with tradition, differentiating the brand while recalling what it stands for:
Knowledge.
For each of you, SKEMA will mean more choice, greater opportunities, a larger number of professors, increased learning opportunities and enhanced individual contact with professors and other staff. At SKEMA you will experience ambitious, innovative and original ways of teaching and learning.
SKEMA Business School is already the largest French business school in terms of student numbers and second largest for the number of professors. Its budget matches its ambitions, and during the months to come the combined potential of the founding schools will be called into play for the lasting benefit of
current and future students.
Our project is an opportunity for all of us.
I am sure you have understood that your education, your success and your self-fulfilment lie at the very heart of SKEMA’s development strategy and I know that all the teams on the different SKEMA campuses share my personal commitment to helping you make the most of this opportunity.
Alice Guilhon
Dean SKEMA Business School