What do you think has linked human development and progression together? Business. Undoubtedly, business interconnects human needs with wants. Moreover, it has been the still standing principle since humanity ventured into civilization’s deep waters.

Be it in the form of a barter system or the structure of currency trade. The dynamics of commerce and business have changed as the need of people, demand in the market, and target audience have changed. Today business involves different aspects and stepping into the market needs appropriate knowledge and studies.

Being one of the most profitable sectors, suiting this age where everyone desires to stand their own grounds, business education seems to be a key to the door of opportunities. Many students enroll themselves in educational institutions with the dream of a bright future.

One institution that provides wings to dreamers is the School of Business, Shantou University.

Let’s have a look into this provider of wings.

Looking into Shantou University’s Journey

With its establishment in May 1996, the School of Business, Shantou University has successively been selected as the comprehensive reform pilot college in Guangdong Province, the Innovation Experimental Zone of talent training mode in Guangdong Province (integrated thinking economic management talent training), and the practice teaching base for college students in Guangdong Province.

At present, it has two first-level master’s degree programs in Business Administration and Applied Economics, and a professional master’s degree program in Business Administration (MBA). There are five undergraduate majors in Business Administration, Accounting, International Economics and Trade, Finance and Marketing Management.

The school has now formed disciplinary teams featuring innovation and entrepreneurship management, organization and strategic management, accounting and financial management, big data and supply chain management, and industrial economics. It owns an Institute of Guangdong-Taiwan Enterprise Cooperation, which is a key research base for humanities and social sciences in universities in Guangdong Province.

Pillars of The Institution

Vision: Business School is committed to advancing with the times and developing global competence through education in contemporary society.

Mission: Educating tomorrow’s business managers with global perspectives, craftsmanship spirit, ability to innovate, and willingness to take responsibility.

Strategy: Learning about local businesses and serving the immediate community, committing to globally recognized standards of teaching and research, building on distinctive strengths, and striving for a first-class education.

Excelling the Learning

The school actively promotes and implements the ‘Artificial Intelligence and Big Data plus Programs’ interdisciplinary talent training system. It has formed the characteristics of multidisciplinary integration and focuses on cultivating integrated thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurial capability.

The school has improved the curriculum design of the undergraduate program in accordance with the needs of the country and society to cultivate project management personnel. Currently, the program has been affirmed by society.

Training students to be innovative problem solvers and to communicate their ideas well with others is the second strategic focus of the institute. It pays more attention to the courses related to innovation, and students strive to be innovative in practice.

Outside The Playground

The school utilizes many external resources to support the development of students’ soft skills through financial assistance and a variety of extracurricular activities. This includes organizing extracurricular activities and outreach programs such as student leadership seminars, peer experience sharing sessions, career development workshops, alumni forums, and innovative entrepreneurship programs. It also supports students in participating in national and international case competitions, simulation challenges, business plan challenges, and other events along with various competitions. In recent years, it has implemented service learning to foster student leadership and promote student participation in society.

Following are the developments of the school in the past three years:

Tech To Make Accessible Education

The Experimental Teaching Centre for Business Administration of the School, with an area of 589 square meters, includes a software simulation laboratory and a room for sandbox experiments and skills practice. The two labs are equipped with 120 network-connected desktop computers.

The labs undertake experimental teaching tasks for Business Administration and economics majors, including experimental courses and projects. The lab environment, safety, and protection are in line with national norms.

The labs can adapt to students’ open management and independent learning needs with humanized design, informatization, and networking conditions. The resource room has a collection of 5,404 business administration books and 453 journals and databases for the use of all teachers and students at the school.

Management on campus is carried out using information technology. The university’s MYSTU (e-learning) system is the main online learning platform for teaching courses, where the tuition activities are thoroughly followed.

Watering the Sprouting Sapling

The school has built special interdisciplinary platforms. It will integrate researchers from different fields inside and outside the school, form a full-time research team, and facilitate the construction of interdisciplinary platforms, including the Big Data and Health Industry Research Centre and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Strategy Research Centre. The research centers focus on health industry chains, technological innovation and entrepreneurship, family business inheritance, governance mechanisms, and other problems.

The school implements refined education, small class sizes, and high teaching quality. It also arranges tutors for each undergraduate student to provide academic guidance and assistance throughout their university studies.

Since 2019, the Li Ka-Shing Foundation has set up a special scholarship program in Shantou University to implement full-tuition awards for undergraduate students and support Shantou University to become the first public comprehensive university in China to award full-time undergraduate tuition fees fully.

During the pandemic, the school actively explored a new model of hybrid teaching that integrates online and offline, gave full play to the advantages of sharing and co-creating online technology and digital resources, supported students, differentiated, and personalized learning realized the diversification of teaching subjects, and laid a good foundation for the flexibility of teaching time and space.

Setting to Face the World

The school’s strategy places special emphasis on ‘committing to globally recognized standards of teaching and research.’ It has established international cooperation with overseas universities to expand the network of partners and develop exchange programs so that more students can go abroad and improve the level of internationalization.

The school supports teachers in conducting cooperative research with universities, focusing on global hotspots, and improving internationalized research output. It also co-organizes academic activities with prestigious universities to promote academic exchanges between the institute and universities and enhance the influence of the institute overseas.

The school has a scholarship policy that specifically funds students to participate in exchange programs abroad, most of which have mutual tuition waivers, and some programs even support students’ living expenses. Some programs offer tuition discounts for Shantou graduates who pursue further studies abroad.

The School of Business has signed formal cooperation agreements with 27 overseas institutions including in Ireland, Russia, USA, Canada, Portugal, France, Lithuania, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, India, Hong Kong SAR of China, and Taiwan of China and has carried out various types of exchange and cooperation programs.

For example, in 2020, the school signed a cooperation agreement with Ural Federal University in Russia, the first partner in Russia. In 2021, it signed a cooperation agreement with Woxsen University in India, the first partner in India. The school has also established cooperative training projects with international partners. For example, the school and Claremont Graduate University in America have established a ‘4+1’ undergraduate and master fast track.

 

Responding to the trend of internationalization of business education, the School of Business has joined European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), Silk Road Entrepreneurship Education Network (SREEN), and has obtained the official membership of the Business Graduates Association (BGA), an international accrediting body for business education.

Arranging for Bright Tomorrow

The school’s Careers Office helps students to plan their careers from their first year and deepens their educational guidance through a series of activities or courses. Freshmen’s professional introduction sessions and ‘Introduction to Programme’ courses specifically. School students are required to take a course on ‘Career Planning for Undergraduates’.

The school organizes internships and provides funds to require students to complete three practical internship activities during the school years. Students are also provided with different types of internship positions according to the characteristics of each major. For example, for positions in Business Administration, the positions offered are to companies and organizations related to this discipline. For positions in finance, internships in banks, securities, and other types of placements are offered.

Milestone Achievements

• Business School is designated as the Provincial Comprehensive Reform Pilot College for Universities and the Provincial Undergraduate Practical Teaching Base in Guangdong. The school also owns an Institute of Guangdong-Taiwan Enterprise Cooperation, which is a key research base for humanities and social sciences in universities in Guangdong Province.
• Business School currently owns two first-level post-graduate programs of Business Administration and Applied Economics and the Master of Business Administration (MBA), three national and two provincial first-class undergraduate majors in the ‘Double Ten Thousand Plan’.
• Since 2018, teachers have won one National Teaching Achievement Award and four Guangdong Provincial Education Teaching Achievement Awards. One course conducted by the school faculty is listed in the first batch of National First-Class Undergraduate Courses.
• Business School has formed academic teams with distinctive directions. In 2021, the school faculty had been funded by over three national and 21 provincial-level projects and published 52 high-level research papers as the first author or corresponding author, among which UT Dallas’s international top journal has accepted 2.
• In the past three years, the students at the institute have won 85 awards in various innovation and entrepreneurship competitions, with 297 students involved in the competitions.
• In 2018, the MBA program passed the qualification assessment of the degree authorization point of the Degree Committee of the State Council.

Initiating The Change

The School of Business has had a fruitful collaboration with these academic partners all over the world, including in Asia.

The faculty members of Shantou University maintain close academic cooperation with faculty members from prestigious universities worldwide. In the areas of innovation, strategy, organizational behaviour, and environmental economics, they have jointly organized important international academic conferences and workshops. This has led to an increase in articles published in international journals by faculty members of the School of Business.

The school encourages faculty members to go abroad for exchange, training, and study visits to explore the frontiers of research. In the past three years, 24 faculty members have been sent to various countries for academic exchange and training activities especially during the tough time of COVID-19.

From 2019–2021, students at the school have participated in 161 outbound exchange activities abroad. The school has also added nine new short-term cooperation programs in winter and summer, involving different countries and regions.

Despite the pandemic, the school sent its students to participate in exchange activities abroad in 2022. It jointly organized a course ‘Doing Business in China’s Pearl River Delta’ with Singapore Management University and Singapore University of Social Sciences and organized a total of 22 students from Shantou University and two universities in Singapore to go to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong for study and exchange activities.

With the increase in the number of students wanting to pursue education abroad, ten graduates chose to study for master’s degrees in foreign universities in 2021. A total of 51 graduates from 2019 to 2021 have studied abroad for further education.

The Lifelong Learning

MBA Education Centre of Shantou University Business School now has a part-time MBA education programme and an Executive Education (EE) programme, with a total of about 2,200 students and alumni as at June 2022. Since 2016, Shantou University Business School has launched the lifelong learning platform of MBA Education Center, which advances the establishment of close and good connections between the current students and graduates of MBA Education Center. It aims to promote continuous improvement and lifelong learning for students.

The lifelong learning platform is committed to promoting continuous improvement and lifelong learning for students and alumni. Since its inception,it provides customised course training and lecture series for social economy.It organizes activities and visits to help them keep up to date with industry news.Besides,the platform have innovated to provide lifelong career development support and entrepreneurial opportunities.It opens an online education platform and established teaching practice bases for enterprise research and industry exchange.With the purpose of lifelong learning,the platform has helped many students and alumni to successfully achieve career advancement and it is received popular recognition by the community.