The long expected activity “Pizza Night” was held in the evening of Dec. 1 as scheduled. This was the first time that student representatives of grade 2011 had a face-to-face communication with Mr. Qian Yingyi, the dean of School of Economics and Management. Under the light of café, Mr. Qian looked more nice than usual in his casual clothes. After the remarks delivered by Mr. Li Gaicong of 2011 F1 Class, Mr. Qian, the dean who had led the school toward reform and splendor for more than once, made a brief self-introduction and made his past known to the students.
Mr. Qian was born in Beijing. He was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. After the national admission examination for colleges and universities was restored, Mr. Qian was recruited by Math Department of Tsinghua University. After graduation in 1981 as an undergraduate, Mr. Qian went to USA for further education and stayed there for 25 years. Speaking of such an experience, the dean is quite emotional——who could taste such reminiscence of a man who had left his country for 25 years?
Then the dean invited every present student to make a brief self-introduction. Although all the students came from grade 2011, their background before coming to Tsinghua involved an ocean of differences. Some of them came from traditional manufacture industry, some from IT communication industry, and others from new industries such as web, media and public relations. Mr. Qian listened carefully to the introduction of each student and made brief comments. He found most of the students with the academic background of science and technology. The number of students in financial and consulting industries was relatively small. However, in foreign business school such as Harvard and MIT, students from financial and consulting industries composed a majority. Compared with the past few years, in grade 2011 there were more students from the media industry and the student source was more diversified.
MBA Students surrounding the Dean with Interesting Topics
Regarding MBA study in the next 2 to 3 years, Mr. Qian made his expectation. He suggested students to improve soft skills and abilities in interactive communication between students apart from the knowledge accumulation with the help of professors. The dean also mentioned that to change from science and technology to MBA was a deep transition. As to the functions of specialized lessons, the dean took himself as an example. Regarding the mathematics he learned, the techniques for doing mathematics played a very small part in his work and life today. On the contrary, it was the logic math brought into his life that benefited him the most. Mr. Qian said MBA curriculum reform had passed 4 years up to now and the focus of future reform would be put on leadership building, entrepreneurship training and experience study.
Different from the past, the dean said entrepreneurs nowadays more intended to create a company actively and the attitude of the society toward entrepreneurship had undergone an up-side-down transformation. Entrepreneurship was no longer a reluctant choice when there was no other way out, but a challenge of life and a desire for success. Within 15 years after the graduation from Harvard MBA, 40% graduates had at least 1 time of company creation experience. At the same time, the dean mentioned that the future improvement of MBA would be focused on experience study. Apart from the traditional education mode with teachers in the centre, more case teaching and practice projects would be added to MBA education.
Deep Communication between the Dean and Students
The following was Q&A phase. Students raised their questions and puzzles regarding study and career development. For instance, some of students asked about how to improve English and if the curriculum design could pay more attention to how to improve English rapidly. The dean answered that language study was an accumulative process in which personal efforts and accumulation played a more important part than external factors. There were other students who suggested MBA education should involve some activities to offer more opportunities for FMBA, IMBA and PMBA to integrate and shorten the interpersonal distance. In answer to this question, Mr. Qian thought that the orientation at the beginning of the semester had offered a very good ice-breaking chance. What would be more important in the future was students actively creating opportunities of organizing related activities to enlarge the network. After answering students’ questions concisely, the dean asked students to write their good suggestions and acceptable programs on scripts, which made students felt one more time the preciseness of this serious and responsible dean.
Pizza Night was approaching the end, but students were lingering in the room. They stayed to take photos together with the dean to record this beautiful night.
Photo of Mr. Qian and Students on Pizza Night
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