The Sloan School of Management has announced that Lingnan (University) College of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, southern China, has joined Sloan's MIT-China Management Education Project and will now offer an International Master's of Business Administration (IMBA) program.
Sloan's management education initiative now includes programs in three leading Chinese universities -- Tsinghua in Beijing, Fudan in Shanghai and Lingnan.
These international MBA programs are developed in conjunction with the three schools and Sloan. Professors from the Chinese universities come to Cambridge as International Faculty Fellows to study Sloan's US-based program. They attend classes, and begin developing a curriculum to be implemented back in China. They work closely with Sloan faculty in their areas of concentration -- attending planning sessions and presenting Chinese-based problems in Sloan classes.
They also experience the program from the students' perspective, joining discussion groups and other activities characteristic of American MBA programs. The experience enables the Chinese professors to compare teaching methods and develop a more global MBA approach.
"Through Sloan's MIT-China Management Education Project, the Chinese professors are able to incorporate our interactive teaching techniques into their program, providing a world-class global business education for the students in China," said Alan White, senior associate dean at Sloan and a director of the initiative. "We are very pleased to be working with Lingnan. Our experiences also provide direct benefits for us and our scholarship. We have greatly expanded our knowledge of China's economy as that country develops into a major economic force."
"We're pleased to join Tsinghua and Fudan in this program with MIT Sloan. Our professors are now over in Cambridge beginning development of the program and our students will begin classes for the preliminary IMBA program in the fall," said Shu Yuan, president of Lingnan (University) College.
The IMBA program curriculum is based on Sloan's curriculum, and consists of nine themes -- global business environments, economic analysis, operations and technology, finance and accounting, marketing, strategy and international management, organizational processes/human resources, management/leadership, and communications -- plus a practicum.
Lingnan University was originally founded as a private university in 1888 by Christian Americans. In 1927, administrative responsibilities of the university were assumed by the Chinese and in the early years, graduates received their degrees from the State University of New York.
Graduates of Lingnan University can be found in many countries, especially in North America. In 1952, the university's departments were incorporated into other universities, primarily Zhongshan University. In 1987, Lingnan (University) College was again established, within Zhongshan University. With a faculty of about 100, Lingnan enrolls about 1,500 of Southern China's top students in its departments of economics, business administration, public finance and taxation, finance and international business, and offers bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.
A version of this article appeared in the April 14, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 26).
