Professor Farhad Noorbakhsh, Head of School from August 2010 to August 2013, reflects on the past three years and tells Aspire how the formation of the Business School in 2010 has enabled the School to flourish beyond all expectations

The School in its new form was launched in August 2010. It brought together three departments with different strengths, modes of practice, objectives and culture. From the beginning we adopted a particular model for our School. All subjects were equally important and it was critical to avoid the school becoming dominated by any particular subject. It was equally important to achieve a balance between the subjects. Our plan was to nurture and support the strengths of each subject yet at the same time bring them closer together, identify synergies, attain a high level of growth and move ahead in a common direction. Whilst our approach was very challenging and unconventional it was promising and in practice it proved to be very rewarding.

The School has flourished at an unprecedented pace. We have doubled our number of students at all levels since 2010. In terms of income we have enjoyed a phenomenal growth in this period (from £15.7m in 2009/10 to £31.5m in 2012/13) and we expect to have a high growth rate for the coming year (an expected income of £34m). During the same period we invested heavily in the School recruiting nearly 60 academics and 5 administrators yet our gross contributions to the University grew by more than 240% over the three years (from £7.7m in 2009/10 to £18.8m in 2012/13). In terms of the level of gross contribution this represents an increase from nearly 50% to 60% of our income during the period.

In terms of our resident postgraduate student numbers, in the current year, with nearly 1,600 students, we are by far the largest School in Scotland and most probably second in the UK. The level of demand for our programmes is very high and the ratio of intake to applications at postgraduate taught level is about 1/10. We also continue to experience a very high level of demand for our undergraduate programmes.

Our teaching objectives were achieved through being efficient, effective and attaining a high reputation. Efficiency was achieved by streamlining our teaching and creating efficient teaching programmes capable of responding rapidly to changes in the demand and needs of the market. Effectiveness was achieved by mainly focusing on the quality of our programmes, high student satisfaction and their employability. For improving our reputation we concentrated on the high quality of our programmes, research-led teaching and approval from accreditation bodies. In the last three years student satisfaction and the employability of our graduates have remained high while we went through two successful reaccreditations.

At the same time we fully focused on the importance of research to our reputation. We aimed to strengthen research in Accounting and Finance and Management (UoA19) for the Research Excellence Framework 2014. Our target was to achieve a Grade Point Average (GPA) of at least 3 (International Excellence) with a significant number of submissions being of the highest possible grade of 4 (World Leading) quality. At present we anticipate a GPA of 3.2 for our submission to UoA19. For Economics (UoA18) we aimed to become a major player by building up our research strength in microeconomics and finance groups and at the same time investing more in our macroeconomics group. Our target was to achieve a GPA of at least 3.25 with a large number of submissions being of World Leading quality. At present we anticipate a GPA of 3.4 for our submission to UoA18.

This was a team effort and we should be proud of ourselves for achieving what would have looked to be unreachable targets when we started. None of this would have been possible without the hard work and support of colleagues within the School and also the unreserved support we received from the senior administration of the University.

Looking at what we have achieved in a rather short period, I am convinced that the Adam Smith Business School has an extremely promising future ahead of it. The exceptionally large size of the School, the continually growing demand for its programmes, its research credentials and reputation puts the School in a very high position not far from occupying one of the top four or five places in the UK and remaining a major player at the international level.

I welcome the new Head of School Professor Jim Love and have no doubt that the Adam Smith Business School under his leadership will reach new heights.