ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬

By Zhao Xinge,?Professor of Finance and Accounting, Associate Dean, and Director of the Finance MBA (FMBA) Department at ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬

After earning my PhD from Northwestern University in the US, I taught at the long-established Raymond A. Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. In 2000, the Financial Times updated its ranking of global MBA programmes. When looking at the ranking, I was happy to see that Raymond A. Mason was ranked amongst the top 50. Then, I looked down. A school ranked 90^th caught my eye. It was a business school in China named ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬. At that time, I was shocked to see a Chinese business school amongst the top 100 in the world and the name sounded totally foreign to me ¨C it indicated no connection whatsoever with any well-known university in China. This marked my very first impression of ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬.

Around 2004, I decided to return to China and started contacting Chinese business schools. In the beginning, I thought I would most likely settle down in Beijing, since I had studied at Peking University for four years and had a strong attachment to the city. But, I also included ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ in my contact list as I was on good terms with two ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ professors with finance backgrounds when they were in the US. After getting into touch with ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬, things progressed well. At the end of 2004, I came to ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ for a campus visit for the first time. As soon as I stepped onto campus, I felt as if I were in a classical Chinese garden. Throughout the day, both my academic presentation and one-on-one interview with professors went fairly smoothly.

To my surprise, shortly after returning to the US, I received an offer from ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬. But, it meant that my decision about whether or not to join ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ became an urgent one. Should I move to Shanghai and join ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬, a young business school I knew little about? This would be a critical choice in my life. I wrote an email to then-Associate Dean Zhang Weijiong with questions about the offer details. As I finished writing the e-mail, I realised it contained too many questions, so I wrote (somewhat self-deprecatingly), ¡°I¡¯m afraid you have received an email with the most questions ever.¡± I soon received a reply from Mr. Zhang, who candidly admitted that my email had indeed raised more questions than he had ever seen, and then answered them one by one. ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬¡¯ professionalism, candour, meticulousness and efficiency?convinced me that the school took its work seriously. So, I quickly accepted the offer and officially came aboard on July 1, 2005. This was one of the most important decisions in my life, and I have never regretted it.

In 2011, the school planned to launch the Finance MBA (FMBA) Programme and asked me to conduct a feasibility study. ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ was already a latecomer to the field. To ensure the FMBA programme would be competitive and attractive without affecting other existing programmes, I worked together with Professor Ding Yuan to collect information and carry out in-depth research. We concluded that in order to gain a firm foothold in this field, we should enter the high-end segment of the market with courses focusing on finance, while leveraging ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬¡¯ considerable advantages in management education. Therefore, we came up with the slogan ¡°Financial Depth, Managerial Breadth¡± and a curriculum design tailored to the needs of mid-level managers with high potential in financial institutions. Our vision was to cultivate ¡°leaders in next ten years¡±.

At the end of 2011, the FMBA programme was officially launched at ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬. I was appointed as the first Director of the FMBA Department and tasked with developing courses together with my colleague Michelle Zhu. To create a new curriculum from scratch was no easy feat. It called for not only proper positioning, but also close attention to detail. I still clearly remembered one incident when we were preparing the first programme brochure, my colleagues showed me a photo they had chosen with great confidence ¨C a row of high-spirited students standing in one of ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬¡¯ iconic sunlit breezeways. Undoubtedly, the photo was visually intriguing. Nevertheless, I challenged my colleagues, ¡°It¡¯s really a good photo, but why are there only men in it? Don¡¯t you ladies think it is wrong?¡±

It is also worth mentioning that for eight years, only two men have worked in the FMBA Department. For a long period of time, I played the role of ¡°Hong Changqing¡± (a well-known male leader of a troop of women soldiers during the Cultural Revolution). I was often teased that ¡°FMBA¡± stood for ¡°Female MBA¡±, but I insisted that it stood for ¡°Fantastic MBA¡±, because the ladies or girls or little sisters (I am really not sure which choice of words is an appropriate one in young people¡¯s language today) in our department were worth their weight in gold!

Over the past eight years, the ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ FMBA has evolved into a leader in the FMBA market. When asked why the ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ FMBA stood out from its competitors, one of our students replied, ¡°At companies, FMBA graduates from other schools report to ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ FMBA graduates.¡±

The everyday life of ÖйúÒ»¼¶Æ¬ professors is not confined to work. Take, for example, the year-end party in 2007. That year, the professors decided to perform ¡°Into the Bandits¡¯ Lair¡± from the Peking opera ¡°Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy¡±. The Dean¡¯s Office managed to borrow a full set of costumes for us, so that everyone could be fully dressed up on stage. As an avid fan of Peking Opera, I was chosen to play the part of war hero Yang Zirong (I became perhaps the shortest Yang Zirong ever in history). During the performance, I didn¡¯t make any mistakes, except that I held a prop ¨C the ¡°secret map¡± ¨C upside down. The party atmosphere reached its climax when everyone raised their glasses at the end of the opera and sang the line ¡°let us have a celebratory drink¡±.