HEC Montréal
PA-3: Inclusive and Participatory Governance

HEC’s governance relies on 3 important comity with extensive power and influence on the school management and orientation.
1 – The school board, with administrators coming from both the school (the school director and secretary general, one student, two professors) and the civil society (six alumni, one representative from the Université de Montréal, two representatives from the government of Québec).
2 – The school board of directors composed of the school’s office directors acting as advisors to the Directors.
3 – The school pedagogic council, composed of school’s academic directors, department directors and faculties.
Students can participate in the school governance through two main governance bodies - the school board and the student association president's comity. There is a place on the school board reserves exclusively for a student representative. Members of the student association president's comity are the school director and secretary general, and the 4 main student association presidents.
Academic staff are heavy weight members of the school governing bodies. There are seats reserves for professor on the school board. The “Conseil pédagogique” (pedagogic council) as an important role to play regarding all aspects of HEC’s academic and research management. The council has an important influence on the general school management. Moreover, the 3 main directors of the council (Academic Programs Director, Director of Faculty Affairs, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer), who are elected among professors, are also members of the board of directors.
While non-academic staff are represented through their respective director on the board of director, they do not have an official elected governing bodies that allow non-academic staff to participate directly in the school decision and orientation.

Regular comity is created by HEC Montréal to support different strategic initiatives and allow our external community share their ideas and opinions, and have an influence in our decisions.
Depending on the issue to address, an initiative can be limited to a short period. For example, during the design phase of our new building in downtown Montréal, we needed to establish during exchange mechanism with our future community. “City hall” meeting between our design teams and our neighbours allowed to present our expansion project and collect feedback while planning the construction of our new downtown building. These meetings allowed to create 2-way communication between us and our community during the construction phase and identify actions required to mitigate the loss of a green space in downtown. Follow-up meetings will be required at the moment of opening our doors to adapt our services to the need of our new community.
Longer, more regular comity also exists. For example, as a result of our strategic planning, a steering committee was created to support and provide advice to the team in charge of the Sustainability, CSR and Ethic initiatives. Composed of 4 professors and 2 external experts, this comity was deeply engaged in the production of a report detailing the actions and resources required for the next sustainable development action plan, and will be solicited in its implementation.

Full list of board members is available here :
http://www.hec.ca/en/about/governance/board-of-directors/index.html
Actual student board member : M. Rémi Galarneau-Vincent, PhD student