Global MBA Conference

Global MBA Conference

Graduate Studies Blog

Submitted by Mathew Stenger, President of the Student ExCo

The Annual Global MBA Conference is a chance for MBA leaders from around the world to come together to share best practices, create impactful networks and brainstorm ways to improve the global MBA student experience. 

From the Nanyang MBA, Mathew Stenger and Yang Jiajia, the president and vice-president of the Student Exco attended the prestigious event which was held over four days on 20-23 May where the first day was a tour of Shanghai downtown area. This was a great way to learn about other global leaders while learning a bit about China’s rich history. 

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The following day, Thursday the 21st, the entire group of 70+ participants packed into an auditorium to hear some amazing presentations about China in the 21st Century, debate about sustainability and have conversations on innovation.

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Then on Friday, we participated in many best practice sharing sessions where teams explored areas to improve alumni engagement, career development and motivating student experience. Aside from this, there were interesting opportunities to learn about calligraphy and a few basic Chinese words – maybe more helpful for Mathew than for Jiajia J. Finally, the evening was capped off with a fresh gala followed by an evening exploring the downtown area.

 

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After a day of breakout sessions, the group came back together to share some of the solutions that were created on Friday. After a few closing ceremonies, the group ended the trip with a cruise up and down the Huangpu River at downtown Shanghai. Traditional dress was provided by the host, CEIBS, and everyone dazzled in their sharp looking qipao’s or changshan’s.

Jiajia and Mathew

Jiajia and Mathew

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 Lessons Learned:

One of main themes of the summit was the strong focus on China’s economy and business culture.  The speakers, such as Mr. David Gosset and Prof. Zhu XiaoMin presented an insightful speech about doing business in China and the endless possibilities of the future Chinese economy. We built on our existing knowledge of the Chinese business culture by learning a few more techniques on how to cope with Chinese business culture.

During the debates, the participants were quite engaging and even debated with the speakers on hot topics like the sustainability of Chinese economy, the democratic evolvement in China and Asia’s role in the global economy. It was a great experience to participate in the discussion on such topics and learn other perspectives.

Aside from the unique discussions, the essence of the global summit is knowledge sharing and that is something that should be on the top of all MBA programs priorities. It benefits future classes tremendously and must be driven by leaders to incorporate and develop.

Another interesting lesson learned was that all top MBA programs have very similar triumphs and challenges which can be valuable as student leaders to understand when leading events, pulling in alumni or delivering top business case competitions.

During one of the group discussion we explored the idea of a long term student body vision which all students can support year over year. Especially with one-year programs, the vision must be longer and outlined for those 5 years to help maintain continuum. This was a great point!

From my perspective, one of the major differences between one-year and two-year programs is the overlap between the incoming and outgoing students. This is much more challenging in one-year programs, but every effort must be made to create this information handoff. Part of the responsibility falls with the MBA students and the other part must be designed and structured by the MBA program office. The knowledge transfer process happens naturally and needs to happen over a period of interactions.

Reflection on experience:

Overall the experience was a great way to reflect on the accomplishments our Nanyang MBA student class has achieved over the past year. I would argue with anyone given our limited and condensed schedule that we were able to accomplish some pretty amazing events led by students and supported by MBA program office staff.

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For more information about Nanyang Business School click here.

 

MBA World Summit

MBA World Summit

Graduate Studies Blog

NANYANG MBA

MBA World Summit

Submitted by Bhrigu Vasisht

MBA student Bhrigu Vasisht from Nanyang Business School, Nanyang technological University (NTU) was selected as one of the top 100 most inspiring MBA students worldwide. The MBA World Summit took place at IESE Business School in Barcelona from 25 – 27 March 2015.

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An Evening of Cricket

An Evening of Cricket

Graduate Studies Blog

Submitted by Dilina Fernando

On the evening of 17th May 2015, we headed out to the SRC to learn and play a game of cricket. There were 18 people on the ground, yet only four of us had played cricket before.

The session was started by Aditya, Vivek and Dilina who gave a background on how the game is played. Thereafter, they demonstrated by playing a few practice overs. Being MBA students, the others were quick to learn the game and alluded the game’s similarity to baseball. An outsider probably would have found it difficult to figure out which game we were playing!

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Multi- cultural Mid- autumn Festival

Multi- cultural Mid- autumn Festival

Graduate Studies Blog

Mid-autumn festivals is celebrated yearly in August or September, it is celebrated by Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese from different part of the world.

One  September afternoon , the full- time MBA participants gathered at the MBA lounge to celebrate this special festival with one another. Vice President-Culture , Singaporean Satheeish Subramaniam, opened the event by giving a brief introduction of what the mid- autumn festival is. Following Satheeish were Sumin Lee, Liu Xi, and Tracy Nguyen who individually expounded on how this extraordinary festival is being celebrated by the Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese, respectively. After learning more about the multi-cultural similarities and differences  of mid-autumn festival, the MBA participants feasted merrily over Chinese and Korean moon cakes.

On the very same day, Satheeish and Sumin headed over to NTU@one- north campus located at the Buona Vista to introduce the festival to the MBA part timers  and of course, to share the moon cakes. 

Different country has its own ways of celebrating Mid-Autumn festivals. We  look at 4 countries on how they celebrate the festivals. 

Singapore

During the mid-autumn festival in Singapore, this is the time of the year where children light up the lanterns and adults indulge themselves with mooncakes. Mid-Autumn festivals were celebrated in Singapore’s hotspot such as Gardens by the Bay, China town and esplanade. Those places are adorned with variations of decorated lanterns and traditional paper cut outs which are lighted at night. It is also celebrated in heartland where there will be lantern design competitions and free snacks such as Din Ding and Dragon’s Beard Candy.

Korean

“Chu-seok”, which means moon festival in English, is a national holiday of Korean Thanksgiving and falls on August 15 of the lunar calendar. Koreans are fond of celebrating this important day as Chu-seok is a period when separated family members get to gather once more to share their lives while enjoying the newly harvested grains and fruits. One of the main highlights of this festival is Songpyun (Korean moon cake), which is made with rice and various sweeteners.

The most important activities done during Chu-seok are giving thanks to ancestors and to Mother Nature for providing a bountiful harvest, wearing of traditional Korean clothes Han- Bok, and looking intently at the full moon as everyone makes a wish.

China

On the festival day, family members gather to offer sacrifice to the moon, appreciate the bright full moon, eat moon cakes, and express strong yearnings toward family members and friends who live afar. In addition, there are some other customs like playing lanterns and dragon & lion dances in some regions. The unique customs of ethnic minorities are interesting as well, such as “chasing the moon” of the Mongolians, and “stealing vegetables or fruits” of the Dong people.

The Moon Cake is the special food of Mid-Autumn Festival. On that day, people sacrifice moon cakes to the moon as an offering and eat them for celebration. Moon cakes come in various flavours according to the region. The moon cakes are round, symbolizing the reunion of a family, so it is easy to understand how the eating of moon cakes under the round moon can evoke longing for distant relatives and friends. Nowadays, people present moon cakes to relatives and friends to demonstrate that they wish them a long and happy life. 

Vietnam

Mid-autumn festival is a traditional festival wherein kids run around holding on to their candle- lit lanterns, eating moon cakes with their parents while enjoying the round beautiful full moon in the sky. Kids in Vietnam celebrate the mid- autumn festival by listening to the legend about a man named Chu Cuoi, sitting under the huge tree, being very lonely on the moon. In this story, Cuoi accidentally found out about a tree that can resurrect lives in the forest when he saw a mother tiger resurrect her dead cub by feeding her the leaves from that tree. He cut a branch of the tree and then planted it on his house garden. Since then, he became very famous because he can resurrect lives just by feeding the dead people the leaves from the tree. Upon leaving his home, his enemy, being very jealous, came and killed Cuoi’s beautiful wife, taking out her intestines and throwing it away. Ironically though, Cuoi cannot resurrect his wife just by feeding the leaves since the intestines are no longer there. His dog voluntarily asked him to use his intestines instead. Cuoi did that to resurrect his wife and made clay intestine to save his dog as well. However, after resurrection, with the dog’s intestines, the wife did not return to her usual self. Once, she forgot to water the magical tree. Thus, the magical tree became very angry and flew into the sky. Seeing that, Cuoi hurriedly rushes to seize the roots to hold it back. However, the tree kept flying up, pulling Cuoi to the moon.

Traditional mooncake is made from chewy brown dough covering a sweet dense filling which is lotus seed paste and sometimes containing salted egg yolks. The same dough is used to make fish or piglet biscuits which are popular among children. Today mooncakes are also made of flaky pastry and snow skin with different flavours such as durian, ice-cream, chocolate, and more.

We enjoyed tasting the different variations of Mooncakes and we learn how different countries celebrated Mid-Autumn festivals.