Forming future leaders 2006-10-12 09:08:00

3225
Forming future leaders
IN 2004, the USC Marshall School of Business launched the Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) program in Shanghai in partnership with the Antai School of Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University.

K. Ravi Kumar, vice dean of Graduate and International Programs at the Marshall School, as well as a professor of information and operations management, is in Shanghai last week to speak to the Antai School's Dean's Forum, and he discussed Marshall, the GEMBA program, and MBA education in general with Shanghai Daily.

USC Marshall and the MBA degree

"A good MBA program is an incubator for the leaders of the future. At USC Marshall, we have been committed to creating such leaders for decades, and our GEMBA program here in Shanghai is a milestone of our progress - we now have a true USC Marshall-quality MBA degree available for those who choose to maintain their careers in East Asia," said Kumar.

USC's Marshall School of Business is one of the oldest business schools worldwide, and USC boasts the most diverse student body of any institution of higher learning in the United States.

"The 'mother program' of the USC Marshall GEMBA program, our Executive MBA in Los Angeles, has been time-tested in the US for more than 20 years," said Kumar. "It's currently ranked the eighth by Business Week and has been in the Top 10 almost every year, from the beginning of Business Week rankings."

"We use the same senior faculty in our Shanghai program as we do in our EMBA program in Los Angeles. GEMBA participants average 37 years of age and 13 years of work experience, and they come from more than 12 different countries and regions," he added.

What MBA graduates learn, why employers seek them?

Kumar speaks at length about what happens in a good MBA program, a field he's been a leader in for decades.

"In any good MBA course, students, of course, learn the "toolkit," for example, the technical and analytical skills, that managers require: working knowledge of accounting, finance, marketing, supply chain and the like. But students also learn to use those tools in a more integrated way - to facilitate better decision-making and leadership of functional teams," he said.

Students also learn strategic thinking/analysis and entrepreneurship - these provide models for organizing ideas and implementing them, whether for the companies they lead or for completely new organizations.

"Finally, students also learn a lot from each other by seeing how other rising leaders are applying the lessons to their own businesses. our students gain another learning angle - learning from the practices of their peers, and reflecting on their own capabilities as a leader," Kumar said.

"And graduates from high quality MBA programs are part of a global community. They share a relatively common learning experience and worldview. They have surmounted a shared 'hurdle' in their careers by going through a rigorous MBA program. In the USC Marshall case, once they have been admitted and graduated from a very difficult learning challenge, they have a stamp of quality approval that the employer can trust." he said.

Kumar noted that employers seek MBAs from high quality programs because, in general, such people have consistently proved their ability to drive better results for companies.

When asked about in-China leaders graduated from Marshall's programs, Kumar said, "we have many excellent graduates. One is Zhu Anguo, graduate of the one-year intensive IBEAR International MBA program, who heads a major China division of Ingersoll Rand. Another is Shu Peng, a recent graduate of our Shanghai-based GEMBA program, who heads Asia Pacific for a key division of Parker-Hannifin. Both men are Chinese who have combined their great innate talent with the excellent education provided by a USC Marshall MBA degree to excel in their careers."

What should candidates consider when looking at Marshall?

Currently, USC Marshall has five MBA programs, but for people in China, the most likely choices are the full-time two-year MBA program in Los Angeles, the unique one-year intensive IBEAR International MBA program in Los Angeles and the GEMBA based here in Shanghai.

The first two are ideal for those who seek a top-quality, full-time MBA program - the two-year program drawing students with an average of five years of experience while the one-year program draws students with an average of eight years of experience. The GEMBA program is ideal for those who want the same top-quality Marshall degree, but want to maintain their Asia-based careers and caters to students with an average of 13 years of experience.

"We seek students who represent a wide variety of industries and professional disciplines. And we, of course, seek students who have proven themselves in their undergraduate studies and are identified as mature, high potential managers in their careers to date. We look for measurable achievements," Kumar concluded.


Comment Like
0Liked