MBA Mentor Program: Trust and Awakening

Dec 04-2020   

One of the NSD’s signature programs, the MBA Career Mentor Program, celebrated its third anniversary in November with an event honoring the hundreds of mentors and mentees that have participated in it. Prof. Chen Chunhua, Dean of BiMBA and initiator of the program, commended the mentors and shared her thoughts on what makes for the most beautiful teacher-student relations.

A not-for-profit project, the program matches each participating BiMBA student with a mentor, with the latter guiding and helping the former to expand the horizon, enhance thought level, understand industrial and commercial environments, set clear professional direction and goals, and make sound planning and preparations for the future. When the currently most outstanding talents – the mentors – meet the most outstanding talents of the future – the mentees, positive energies flow and amplify both ways. Among the more than 200 mentors, over half are EMBA and MBA alumni of the NSD and the rest are chief human resource officers and other senior executives of partner companies of the NSD. There are also some expatriate mentors.

In her speech, Prof. Chen illuminated her understanding of teacher-student relations by tracing her journey to Greece and Turkey to pay homage to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Teachers and students are bonded by the requirement to pass on the wisdom and truth of the humankind. The most beautiful teacher-student relations are about trust and awakening, in the sense that a student can see himself/herself in the mentor and seek the best self by learning with the mentor, and the same for the mentor to gain from working with a mentee.