BiMBA Co-Dean Professor John Yang:BiMBA’s Core Values and Unique Features
Sep 18-2014
Good morning, Prof. Lin, good morning, Dirk, good morning, all BiMBA faculty members and staff, and good morning new students from FT and PT classes of 2014. Congratulations on choosing BiMBA as the school for your MBA study. You have made the right decision. I’m sure that when you graduate in two years, you will not regret your decision and memorize this learning experience for a long time to come.
Today, I want to share with you what it means to study at BiMBA. I will focus on BiMBA’s history and core values and explain why BiMBA is unique, compared to other business schools, as Prof Zhang said in his speech.
Beautiful campus. First of all, BiMBA is located at one of the most beautiful university campuses in China. Peking University is among the best in its layout, architecture and scenery in the world. If you come to Peking University, you will see the beautiful Weiming lake, the famous water pagoda, and quite a few other scenic spots which provide you with a very good and pleasant environment to study. Once you step into the Lang Run Yuan, you are mostly impressed by this 200 year history royal garden where you will engage in serious study, attend lectures, conduct presentations and reflection in the next two years.
History of BiMBA. BiMBA, as the first international joint venture business school, was inaugurated on June 25th 1998, when the U.S.Commerce Secretary William Daley participated in the event together with a few important Chinese and U.S. officials. President Clinton was visiting Peking University at that time. After about ten years working with 26 American Consortium schools, BiMBA established cooperative relationship with Vlerick business school in 2008. Fordham university Business school in New York was the first MBA degree granting institution from 1998 to 2008. Vlerick has become the degree granting business school since 2008.
High Quality Professors. We have had very high quality and competent Chinese and international faculty members teaching our students from all over the world. Of the faculty members from NSD, we have had Dr. Justin Lin of Chinese economy, Dr. Zhou Qiren of Chinese economic reforms, Dr. Haiwen of international economics, among many others. Dr. Yi Gang, a founding father of CCER/NSD, has been the senior economist and leading banker of the People’s Bank of China. And you will be able to see a great variety of ideas and ways of teaching from professors with different academic and cultural backgrounds. These professors, Chinese and international, all have had solid academic training and years of excellent teaching record.
Top Rankings. BiMBA was ranked as top PT and FT MBA programs in China on many occasions in the past 15 years. Compared to over a dozen leading joint MBA programs in China, ours was ranked first and second places by leading U.S. business school magazines such the
Impact of PKU values: BiMBA is strongly influenced by core values of Peking University. Peking University’s core values emphasize democracy and science, liberal thinking, a diversity of ideas, tolerance of different views and perspectives, etc. Under the leadership of Dr. Justin Lin, our faculty members often have heated debates on different issues. Here at NSD we have professors of varying political and economic views and the atmosphere contributes to independent academic quality. We do hold these PKU values dear and encourage all students to foster an independent mindset and think seriously on complex social and economic matters.
BiMBA Core Values: about six months ago, we re-wrote BiMBA’s core values: “北大精神, 社会情怀, 国家发展，全球视野”. The Literal translation: Follow the spirit of Peking University, Foster Social Responsibility, Engage in National Development, be Guided by Global Perspectives. We want our students to keep in mind PKU values, while not forgetting our social responsibility to help those lagging behind. We actively participate in developing the country’s economy, but look at country’s political and economic issues from global perspectives.
BiMBA Mission and Honor Code: BiMBA’s mission is aimed at “training, developing, inspiring future global business leaders and professionals of competence, characters and commitment.” After learning from West Point way of leadership, BiMBA develops its own honor code: “BiMBA students never lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do during studies at Peking University.” We are strongly against anyone who is engaged in plagiarism while doing research. We remind our students to work hard and never attempt to cut corners or utilize short cuts.
Focus on Competence: BiMBA holds high standards on academic learning. We strongly emphasize a high quality of teaching and learning. Our teachers come from all over the world, including PKU’s NSD. We emphasize teacher student interaction in classes rather than solely giving lectures. We encourage teachers and students to work on most recent business cases in China while learning the Western based theory of management. Our students are required to give a lot of thinking and thoughts before classes and to speak their own mind during lectures. In addition to regular classes, we often invite leading experts in businesses, such as CEOs and CFOs, to share their experience in business with our students. We have also invited globally recognized academic professors and Nobel Prize winners as well as heads of states, such as Jimmy Carter, to come to BiMBA to share their life experience with our students.
Focus on Character: Developing good character of students is a top priority at BiMBA. Unlike other business schools in China, we inspire students to develop positive character in study and life. We want them to be open and broad minded, honest and trustworthy, courageous and persistent in learning. We encourage students to be tolerant of different views and ideas and form a habit of listening to others’ views and comments. We want our students to take care of themselves and others, and be sensitive to others’ concern and problems. Empathy is an important character that is strongly advocated here because our classes are composed of students from many different nationalities. We are strongly against those negative characters and behaviors: being a loner, unfriendly attitudes, asocial, never spending time with others, egocentricity, non-cooperative attitudes, ruthlessness, irritability and selfishness. Our hope is to focus on both competency and positive character during students’ lives at BiMBA.
Focus on Commitments. BiMBA wants students to actively engage in social activities and spend time doing social responsibility work, to help the poor, the needy and those socially lagging behind. In the past, our students, both regular and EMBA students, have donated lot of money to support many elementary schools in China’s backward areas and we encourage our students to continue making such efforts.
Diversified and Interesting Life at BiMBA Life at BiMBA is international, open, interesting and colorful. Students are engaged in various sports activities after classes. There are many talented students who also contribute professional performance to BiMBA’s colorful New Year party held in late December. Our students have established their respective class culture and mottos such as “ Be Independent, Yet Interdependent”; “Be Individualistic, Yet Collective Minded”. Our EMBA students formulated different class slogans that emphasize “appreciation” “sharing” and “Be Healthy”. Many classes follow the motto “We are one Family” and continue learning after graduation.
Focus on Global Perspectives: Since Bimba is an international business program, our students often spend time visiting and learning from best schools and business firms in other countries such as USA and Europe. In the past 15 years, we have taken our students abroad to engage in global leadership tours and spend time visiting organizations of international quality. From 2004 up to today, we have developed unique relationship with West Point Academy where we take students to visit and learn leadership practice on the spot. Every year West Point professors and cadets also visit China and spend time with us visiting historical sites and unique companies.
Thanks very much everyone for your participation in today’s orientation. I am very confident that you will be able to learn a lot during your studies at BiMBA in the next two years. I am hoping many of you will fully release your leadership potential and become leaders of character in your respective organizations in China and abroad.
Once BiMBA, Always BiMBA!
