indian institute of management lucknow iiml recently launched its first fulltime oneyear residential programme at its noida campus in all 46 students have joined the international programme in management for executives ipmxthe programme will be offered in association with the faculty of management mcgill university canada elaborating on the programme poonam sahgal dean iiml said students will spend one term with mcgill university where they would pursue international finance and international strategies moreover once there students would also participate in workshops on sustainable developmentapart from the inhouse faculty an international visiting faculty from mcgill kellogg school of management and national university of singapore will also be teaching the students besides as part of the personality development programme students would get to interact with experts from the field of sports entertainment and artists among otherstalking about the profiles of the inaugural batch of students ajay singh chairman mdp and interaction committee iiml noida stated the average work experience of the participants is nine years and they come from diverse functional areas right from public section unit to corporate sectors and government servicesa majority of the students are technical graduates around 45 are from the it and technical domain while the rest represent the telecom power banking finance and defence sector the programme the average gmat score for which was 710 will cost the students rs 10 lakh including the cost of studying in and travelling to mcgillaccording to devi singh director iiml the corporate world is changing rapidly and the middlelevel managers need to keep up on his mission to build an international bschool he said the noida campus and the international programme are a step towards building a global bschool but with a social conscienceclimate change centremeanwhile iiml has also announced its plans to set up a centre for business for climate change this would be the first centre in india which is dedicated to environmental issues and their linkages to businesses to be launched by a bschoolclimate change is affecting our lives in many ways and businesses are thought to be the prime reason for this change there is an increasing pressure from the society on businesses to become environment friendly said singhsushil kumar chairman agribusiness iiml added businesses managers need to develop an understanding and appreciation of environmental issues facing businesses they need to be aware of environmental management strategies available to them and of how these can be used to gain a longterm competitive advantage hence there is an urgent need for conducting indepth studies and research on the impact of businesses on the climate it is unfortunate that no educational institute in the country is carrying out focussed research on this issuethe proposed centre at iiml would undertake studies to analyse issues facing indian businesses due to climate change document best business practices being followed at the global level carry out research on emission trading and provide consultancy services to the corporate sector and so on