First National University in Taiwan! College of Management, NSYSU have earned AACSB accreditation for the fourth time.
On January 30, 2020, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) officially announced that the College of Management, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) had earned the AACSB accreditation for the fourth time, and it was the first national university in Taiwan to maintain the prestigious reaccreditation for the third time.
The College of Management in NSYSU earned the first AACSB accreditation in 2005, making the school the first national university awarded with the accreditation in Taiwan. In 2010, while only four schools in Taiwan were initially accredited, The College of Management in NSYSU earned the first reaccreditation by AACSB. Then, even the accreditation standards were updated in 2015, the College was once again awarded with the reaccreditation, showing that the school’s performance had continuously grown in education.
In December 2019, reviewed from the perspectives of Innovation, Engagement and Impact, the College earned affirmation again from the peer review team (PRT) members. Interviewing with the faculty, the College’s advisory members, and alumni, the PRT claimed that the School has made significant progress in the development of a shared vision. The available resources and support for research and teaching were also quite abundant. For instance, professors could hire graduate students as research assistants. Also, multiple digital and online courses are available for students. The PRT members also confirmed the school’s efforts in building up the connection among students, internship opportunities, and industry-academia cooperation. Furthermore, they are delighted to see the establishment of the School’s career center, developing closer links between the industry and the academia.
Dean San-Yih Hwang, the College of Management, NSYSU commented that earning the AACSB reaccreditation thrice proved that the school had continued to make progress in education, responding to the current trends in global business management. He also mentioned that the AACSB PRT reviewers were especially impressed by the College Social Responsibility Report, the Business Analytics Platform, Programming, Statistics and Business Practices Courses, Corporate Mentoring program, and the foundations established by the EMBA alumni. Dean Hwang promised that the school would also continue to realize its vision of becoming one of Asia’s leading management colleges fulfilled by outstanding research, learning, innovation, and practical collegiate social responsibility and engagement.
Established in 1916, AACSB is currently the most prestigious business school accreditation institution in the world. At present, 862 business institutions in 56 countries around the world have earned AACSB accreditation, including 26 universities in Taiwan.
Amanda Huang, class 101 of IBMBA National Sun Yat-Sen University, currently works in the products planning and development of IOT in Inventec. She indicated that the experiences she had in ACT Global Program helps her in both communicating with different departments and consulting projects with foreign clients. Here are the contents that Amanda shared with us:
1.The remarkable things in terms of academic aspects during ACT program
For me, two courses impressed me the most: Innovation and Entrepreneurship during Taiwan module and Business Consulting in Austria module. In the courses of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we team needed to discuss a project regarding customized bouquet with local Kaohsiung flower shop, then came up with a business proposal to solve their needs. Being able to participate in the development of Taiwanese companies was a great experience for me.
Consulting courses in Austria module enriched me a lot as well. During the courses, the whole class visited different companies, then we were assigned to an Austrian listed company which was specialized in hydropower, and we started the consulting project for 2 to 3 months. The main target of our project was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of Kazakh hydropower and water resources in Central Asia, and we needed to complete a business proposal to our company as a final report. Overall, I learned a lot during the process, and I had a deep and profound understanding of the industry of hydropower.
2.The unforgettable experiences in terms of cultural aspects during ACT program
The cultural experiences impressed me the most when we were discussing projects with our teammates. In the beginning, conflicts appeared when we were communicating and exchanging ideas, but I also realized the differences in terms of cultural aspects. For instance, Canadians are eager to express their ideas in a more direct way. Austrians, in personality aspects, are more similar to Taiwanese, since they are considerate and humble. Although we had some augments in the beginning of the program, we always reconciled very soon, and I think this is also a process of learning to us.
3.What are the challenges or difficulties you encountered during ACT program
The intensity of schoolwork was the major challenge for me, since I am not an English native speaker, I needed to put huge efforts to sharpen my presentation skills and essay writing. Another challenge was that we were constantly relocating due to the characteristics of ACT Global Program, it’s difficult to arrange time for group discussion.
4.What are your self-improvements after ACT program
ACT Global Program specified the importance of leadership, so I found myself strengthened pretty much in that field. Other than that, because of the consulting courses in Austria, we had to read and search a great amount of data by our own, and actively study professional knowledge from various width and depth so that we could have in-depth understanding of certain industry. Therefore, the ability to conduct reports and projects was improved.
5.How does the experience of ACT program assist you in your current occupation
The experiences of ACT Global Program actually helps me a lot. Currently I’m working in Inventec, and I’m in charge of the department of product planning and development of Internet of Things. As a result, I always face different departments and clients for work, and I need to fly abroad for foreign meetings. When I’m communicating with clients from all around the world with distinct cultural backgrounds, having the experiences of ACT program really assists me to have proficient interaction with others, and it also minimize the cultural shocks for me.
6.How would you advise students who look forward to joining ACT program
First things first, prepare your English ability, especially oral expression, since you need to constantly express your opinions throughout the program, both class-wise and life-wise. Additionally, be considerate to others, because although it’s a global village in the modern world, cultural differences still exist. When you confront with conflicts in communication, I would suggest that you can talk directly to foreigners with steady attitude and tactful tone. Try to convince others with your logics, and find out the points that others are insisting on.
【CM】The Green Trend: an Environmentally Focused Hotel in Taichung, Taiwan
On 27th December 2019, students from countries such as Russia, France, England, Thailand, U.S. and Taiwan - studying the course ‘Organizational Politics’ visited ‘Green Hotel’. There are two Green hotels in Taichung city. One is in the Fengjia district and the other is in the West district of Taichung. We visited both locations.
Students received a warm welcome by Ms. Kerry Chang, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Green Hotel. With enthusiasm, she gave us an excellent tour and an insight of the hotel business, innovative ideas, and how to implement inspirational sustainability strategies.
Green Hotel is dedicated to run a business that emphasizes on the environment and long-term sustainability. In the lobbies of the hotels, the visitor can see in the main atrium lights the sunlight from the glass rooftop. One of the very interesting environmental details of Green Hotel is the card given to the guest, which is multi-purpose, because it can be used for the room cardholder, postcard, as well as a bookmark. It also eliminates plastic bottle usage by offering accessible water dispensers at every floor.
Apart from its environmental approach, the hotel also helps local businesses by providing guests a “Food Passport”, which consists of different local restaurants worth visiting.
Ms. Chang noted that the hotel business in recent years has declined. Only Taipei has not been affected. Green Hotel has successfully tried to standout with its environmentally friendly approach. It attracts guests from Taiwan as well as from abroad. It is popular with young backpackers, families and businesspeople. Ms Chang pointed out that ‘20 to 30 percent of our guests choose our hotel because it is environmentally focused. Our guests appreciate our effort in putting all our energy towards the environment. Our designs and service makes as very different and competitive in this tough business’.
This fieldtrip visit helped students reflect on the topics discussed in the Lecture: ‘Is the Environment a New Middle-Class Trend?’, which is part of the ‘Organizational Politics’ course taught by Dr. Ryan Brading. It showed in real-life how an environmental business in the hotel industry operates, and what it means to be “Green” in the 21st Century.
【CM】First connect with R language. The College of Management hosts 2020 Business Intelligence Day for high school students
On January 20, 2020, the College of Management, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) hosted the "2020 Business Intelligence Day” to allow high school students to understand the process of basic data analysis and data visualization using the R language, cultivating their interest in business data analysis. A significant number of registrations were received for this event, and 90 students from Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Senior High School, National Feng-Shan Senior High School, Sanmin High School, Yunlin Hu-wei Senior High School, Taoyuan Pingjen Senior High School, and Pingtung Girls’ High School, etc. were admitted. Assistant Professor Tony Cho pointed out that today's high school students were quite active in exploring abilities, and the College was also happy to share the knowledge with them and cultivate future talents in business management.
The full-day experience camp was divided into two sessions. The first part included background learning, introducing the R language environment and the Dplyr package. The session allowed the students to perform basic calculations and use Table (), tapply () and other functions to obtain descriptive statistics. The second part included practicing visualizing data, using the ggplot2 & d3heatmap package to draw bar graphs, line graphs, heat maps, scatter plots, etc. to present statistical results. Finally, students will be grouped to analyze and present 120 years of Olympic contestants' data (including gender, height, sports and medals, etc.) for them to learn data analysis through practice.
The teaching assistants of the camp were all students taking Business Big Data Micro Course at the College of Management. In a short and brief manner, high school students who were exposed to the R language for the first time were able to write a few small programs within one day. 林士弘, a second year student of the master in the business administration program, who was one of the lecturers for the camp, said that each group of students was asked to present the main findings from the Olympic data using graphs, and their presentations were graded by the teaching assistants in terms of creativity, annotation detailedness, stage manners and technicality. The camp offered a total prize of NT$42,000.
The team that won the first place consisted of 黃猷珵and李柏寯 from Sanmin High School, 高瑀and曾冠旗 from Guoguang Laboratory School, National Sun Yat-sen University, 陳姿諭 from National Feng-Shan Senior High School, and林佳宜 from Hu-wei Senior High School. They explored the relationship between the participating countries’ GDP and democracy index with the number of medals. They concluded that countries with a large number of medals were not necessarily economically prosperous. They pointed out that, "Hard work can produce better results than financial resources". 陳韻卉, the teaching assistant assigned to lead the team who is a second-year graduate student in the computer science program, said that students who had never learned about programming languages were frustrated at first, but she was feeling especially proud and pleased when they ended up presenting their analysis result on the stage with confidence. "It is our most important task to make sure the students are not overwhelmed by the large amount of data and programming”, she said.
The team that won the second place was diverse and consisted of吳坤霖from National Feng-Shan Senior High School, 邵彥哲from Kaohsiung Saint Paul's High School, 陳伃玟 from Lichih Senior High School, 鍾順穎 from Guoguang Laboratory School, National Sun Yat-sen University, and 楊舒晴 and陳宏諭 from Sanmin High School. They analyzed the correlation between the democracy index and sports performance of various countries and found that the presence of a democratic system in a country did not affect the number of gold medals the country won. Nevertheless, the majority of the countries that won gold medals had a democracy index of more than 8. Therefore, it was inferred that the presence of a democratic system in a country could have certain advantages for sports development. 許紘齊, the teaching assistant assigned to lead the team who is a second-year graduate student in the computer science program, pointed out that the reason for the team to win the award was each student was delegated with the task they were good at. For instance, the students who were not good at programming were assigned to prepare and do the presentation, while the students who were more interested in programming were allowed to focus on programming. The award was the result of a collective effort.
In light of the upcoming 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, the team consisting of陳禹璇 from Deguang Catholic High School, 范名媛 and蕭尹翔 from Guoguang Laboratory School, National Sun Yat-sen University, 黃廉凱 from St. Dominic Catholic High School, 陳以恩 from National Feng-Shan Senior High School, and王皓平 from Sanmin High School was curious about the relationship between the host country and the number of medals won. Studying China as the subject, they analyzed the medal data of the past four Olympic Games (China was the host country in 2008) and found that when China was the host country, the total number of medals the Chinese team won in each sport did indeed outperform the team in other years. Therefore, they also inferred that because the home team would have more people cheering for them, the visiting team would be relatively pressured, which would affect the sports performance indirectly.
After a day of learning and practices, it is believed that the students have gained a preliminary understanding of the concept of data analysis. The most important thing is that they would no longer be afraid of dealing with data and could enjoy the sense of accomplishment of turning primary data into useful information.