【Eduniversal】7 Degree Programs in the College of Management at NSYSU Make the List of 2021 Eduniversal Best Masters & MBAs Ranking
The College of Management at National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) has been ranked third in Taiwan in Eduniversal’s Business School Ranking of the top 1,000 business schools in the world; it has been awarded level 4 “Palmes of Excellence” status along with National Chengchi University (NCCU). Eduniversal recently announced the Best Masters & MBAs Ranking 2021, in which seven programs in the College of Management at NSYSU made the list. In 2021, Eduniversal adopted a new theme: creative management, innovation, and design thinking. The organization’s Best Masters & MBAs Ranking is also highly selective, as not all programs surveyed and evaluated by Eduniversal are ranked. The ranking is based on an analysis of the educational offerings of nearly 4,000 schools and universities from 154 countries and regions. Given these key factors, the ranking result reaffirms the College of Management at NSYSU as an outstanding business school with a continuous and deepening international influence.
All seven degree programs have made the list again, with different rankings from last year. The ranking results are as follows: the Executive MBA is ranked 29th in Far East Asia and 4th in Taiwan; the MBA program in the Institute of Human Resource Management is ranked 7th in the category of Human Resources Management in Far East Asia; the MBA in the Institute of Marketing Communication is ranked 10th in the Corporate Communication category in Far East Asia; and the Master of Health Care Management program in the Department of Business Management has had an excellent result, being ranked 93rd worldwide in Health Management. The three programs mentioned above are also the only programs in Taiwan that made the list for each category. Furthermore, the Department of Information Management has been ranked 18th in the Information Systems Management category in Far East Asia and 6th in Taiwan. The MBA programs in the Institute of Public Affairs Management and the Department of Finance also appear on the list; the former has been ranked 19th in Far East Asia and 2nd in Taiwan in the Public Administration/Management category, and the latter has ranked 24th in Far East Asia and 4th in Taiwan in the Corporate Finance category.
Eduniversal's Best Masters & MBAs Ranking is based on three criteria: the reputation of the program, the salary of graduates’ first employment, and student satisfaction. Five points maximum are given for each. In terms of the reputation of the program, 50% of this score is based on the opinions of recruiters, and the other half on the “Palmes of Excellence” level that the school attained the year before. For the salary of first employment, the score is based on the information provided by each program. The score of student satisfaction comes from a survey completed by students; this can only be scored when a minimum of 10% of the students in a given program reply. By adding the points from each of the three criteria, each program is given its final score. The programs in the College of Management that made the list are all ranked with an outstanding three stars (a final score of 9 to 11.99).
Eduniversal currently has two rankings: the world's top 1,000 business schools (Business School Ranking) and the Best Masters & MBAs Ranking. It is dedicated to selecting schools that are able to cultivate global talent and provide a reliable reference standard for potential students and employers. Professor San-Yih Huang, Dean of the College of Management, has stated that the College of Management obtained a remarkable result in the Eduniversal rankings, being recognized as a level 4 “Palmes of Excellence” universal business school. The departments and institutes in the College have also achieved great rankings, and the College will continue to work hard and innovate, and hopefully deliver even better results in the future.
【Award】‘Sun Yat-Sen Management Review’ Awarded 2nd Place in the 2021 Academic Impact Awards – Long-Term Dissemination Award for Journals (Management Field)
Congratulations to ‘Sun Yat-Sen Management Review’ for being awarded 2nd place in the 2021 Academic Impact Awards – Long-Term Dissemination Award for Journals in the field of management by the National Central Library (NCL).
NCL decided on the winners of the 2021 Academic Impact Awards by analyzing the utilization of resources in ‘Taiwan Citation Index – Humanity and Social Sciences’, ‘National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan’, and ‘NCL Taiwan Periodical Literature’.
‘Sun Yat-Sen Management Review’ was awarded the Long-Term Dissemination Award for Journals for its total number of citations in four types of literature – journals, degree dissertations, books, and book chapters – over the past 30 years, and was ranked second in the field of management.
【Student Achievement】Students from the College of Management Make Nationwide Top 6 in Hult Prize Regionals 2021
For the first time, a team from the College of Management at National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), formed of students of different majors and nationalities, participated in the regional competition in Asia for the Hult Prize. The Hult Prize is viewed as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for business schools, and has been referred to as the “Nobel Prize for Students”. The team was one of the top six teams that made it into the finals, and have a high chance of representing NSYSU in the next round of competition in London. The Hult Prize was launched in 2009 and was first hosted by the United Nations Foundation in partnership with the Hult International Business School in the United States. It has since attracted over one million students from around the world. Each year, the Hult Prize selects a challenge topic, and the 2021 topic is “Food for Good”. The annual competition encourages students from colleges and universities around the world to engage in a global social issue and create a proposal on the topic. With the winning team being granted a $1 million seed capital to put their vision into action for the benefit of human civilization, every student is given the opportunity to make a difference in the world.
Team Members
The College of Management is committed to cultivating students into interdisciplinary and international management professionals. Gary Yuan, an IBMBA student from the College, joined forces with three other students from other colleges to form a team, Future Fish, and they brainstormed as a team for this year's topic of “Food for Good”. The other three students are Lyn Suphanuch, a senior in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature from Thailand; Berrica Tsai, a junior in the Department of Oceanography; and Bro Chuang, a senior in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Future Fish was selected from six groups after a preliminary round of auditions within NSYSU to represent the university in the Asia Pacific competition. Future Fish then competed against 30 teams from 14 universities, including National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, National Cheng Kung University, and National Chengchi University, with a total of 120 students of 20 nationalities. Due to the diverse background of the team, they received more attention from the judges and were selected as one of the Top 6 in the final round. The judges clarified that Future Fish in fact took second place, and encouraged the team to fight for the spot to compete in the following international round.
Theme of the Start-up Business Proposal
Oceans make up 70% of the earth's surface, and in the remaining 30% of space inhabitable by humans, more than 40% has been exploited by land-based agriculture, resulting in the increasing depletion of land resources. Therefore, Future Fish have proposed to include and transform the vast oceans into a supply chain for human food sources. Lyn Suphanuch, whose family is engaged in land-based fish farming in Thailand, came up with the idea of taking over her father's business and assisting in the transformation of the business from land-based fish farming to sea-based net cage culture through the introduction of high technology. Berrica Tsai from the Department of Oceanography suggested the aquaculture of cobia, a high-protein seafood, as Taiwan is one of the few countries that have the technology to cultivate cobia, and the country’s warm climate is more suitable for the growth of cobia than other high latitude countries. To make more effective use of net cage culture, sea grasses that can absorb greenhouse gases can be planted next to the cages; oysters, which purify the water, and sea cucumbers, which consume fish excrement as nutrients, can be cultivated at the bottom of the cages. All these measures can work to transform a fishing net into a sustainable ecosphere.
Fieldwork: Visiting fishermen in Changhua District
To understand better the development of the fishery industry, Future Fish visited fishermen in Changhua District to investigate the difficulties encountered by fishermen in the field at present. Mr. Yu-tung Hung, the Director of Changhua District Fishermen's Association, who was awarded Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award for farming in Taiwan and has over 30 years of experience in the industry, provided the team with many valuable suggestions. He pointed out the fact that since many countries are already developing net cage culture, Future Fish needs to identify characteristics that will help them stand out. Fishery is on the way to becoming a sunset industry because no young blood is entering the industry; young people are reluctant to take over this business. Director Hung stated that the key to attracting young people to help transform the industry lies in the incentives Future Fish can provide. He praised the four students from NSYSU for effectively using net cage culture to create an independent ecosphere, which is an innovative idea and has the potential to start a new chapter in the industry. Another oyster farmer in Changhua District stated that in recent years, in addition to the reluctance of the younger generation to take over the work, the biggest pain point of the fishery industry has been that it is highly dependent on the climate, and nowadays people do not like work that is physically demanding and full of uncertainty caused by issues such as typhoons, frost damage, parasites, deoxygenation in farming areas and so on. These things have been causing problems for a lot of fishermen.
Hult Prize Regional Competition at National Taiwan University
The regional competition of the Hult Prize was held at National Taiwan University this year, and consisted of three rounds. In the first round, the teams were divided into groups for their first presentations, and in addition to Future Fish’s project, teams from other schools also came up with many refreshing ideas such as making artificial meat from beer lees and assisting and counseling disadvantaged farmers to raise and promote snails as a source of protein, to name a few. In the second round of the competition, the teams were required to discuss their projects with the judges, who decided which teams should advance to the third round. Among the judges, the Canadian judge, Taylor Scobbie, CEO of Impact Trade Corp., and the Taiwanese judge, Jessi Fu, General Manager of Impact Trade Corp., had both been part of the global winning team of the Hult Prize in 2015. They said, straightforwardly, that new entrepreneurs should focus on one business at a time and not do too many things at once, because of their limited resources and experience. They pointed out that many of the teams' proposals were too complicated, which meant that people would question the feasibility of their ideas. Another judge, Miles Hu, a Chinese American who used to be the Senior Executive at General Electric and is now the principal of Whitesun International, explained that since each team only had four minutes to present, the 'elevator pitch' technique was particularly important, and presenting the key points well within four minutes was the key to advancement in the competition. He also said that many teams had good proposals, but the content of their presentations was complicated, which confused the audience.
Only 6 out of 30 teams made it to the final round, with National Sun Yat-sen University's Future Fish among them. The members of the team said that their hard work over the past five months had finally paid off. The organizer of the event also stated that it had not been easy for the team from the College of Management of NSYSU to achieve such a good result, since it was their first time participating in the competition. In Future Fish’s presentation, they proposed using AI technology and industrial technology to solve the pain points encountered by fishermen. The plan includes a more effective way to measure environmental water quality, adopting sophisticated industrial technology to facilitate the exchange of warm water at the surface and cold water at the bottom so that fish species can avoid the threat of diseases posed by poor environmental quality and ocean deoxygenation. Their idea of ‘prevention is better than cure’ was highly appreciated by the judges.
Gary Yuan, the student from IBMBA, suggested that students who wanted to participate in the competition in the future should work with students from different professional backgrounds as much as possible; this not only makes the diversity of the team composition more convincing to the judges, but also allows the team to acquire new viewpoints through the expertise of other teammates. Moreover, the professionality of the team will be better-rounded. The regional competition may have come to an end, but just like the mission of the Hult Prize – to make the world a better place through the small amount of power held by each young person – each participant will have improved during the competition regardless of whether or not he or she qualified for the next round, and the ambition to change the world will have intensified for all of them.
【Student Association】Time to look back: Black Valentines Party
14th of April 2021, Black Valentine's Day is an unofficial holiday. Singles in South Korea originally observed it. On this day, singles who haven't received gifts from significant others on Valentine's Day and White Day (on the 14th of March) will gather together to 'commiserate' with each other. They will be wearing black color and having black-colored food, especially ‘jjajangmyeon’(noodles in blackbean sauce). However, the Student Association (SA) of the International Programs believes that Happy Valentine's Day is not just for couples, but to celebrate love in all forms. SA would like to remind us how much we love our friends, family, teachers, and other people around us, realize how important it is to seize the day.
To share the love and bond up the relationship among students, SA held the "Black Valentine's Party" on that day at the College of Management, NSYSU. This event attracted several students from IBMBA, GHRM MBA, and other students from the College of Management, NSYSU, with various activities and savored delicious foods, snacks, and drinks.
The night party started with the game "Guess the word by emoji!". Participants need to guess the correct answers after watching pictures of emojis with different topics to win this game. There are four categories, and each participant will have 10 seconds/ per picture to make a guess. One point for one correct answer, and the winners will be two people who get the highest scores. All students were excited to join this game, some answers were wrong, but most of them were correct. Finally, "Guess the word by emoji!" successfully ended with the champion from IBMBA 1st year student, Melody Xue, who got 11 correct answers.
The second game was "Flip Cup Tic Tac Toe". Participants have to use one finger of one hand to try to flip their cup over, so the cup lands on its open end. When it lands properly (open end down) on the table, then place it on the board quickly in a square to help advance their team in tic tac toe. Their teammate will help them to finish the game. All the attendees were divided into four teams competing to find the prizewinner. Despite the difficulty of balancing the cup, we finally found the champion team of the game, which form by Lisa Chang (1st-year IBMBA), Stan Tsai (2nd-year IBMBA), and James Tseng(1st-year GHRM MBA).
At the end of the party, the "Ping Tac Toe'' required a range of movement. The player must bounce ping-pong balls into a grid of glasses to get a 3 in a row during the game. They also must alternate the color of the ping-pong ball thrown after a ball lands in cups. Once and for all, the night with lots of memorable moments ended with the victories from 2 teams, which are Team_ La Hanh Phuong (1st-year IBMBA) and Cao Huynh Hong Phan (1st-year GHRM MBA); and Team_ Andrey Tukmachev(2nd-year IBMBA), Reianthong Vongseanglam (1st-year GHRM MBA), and Ivan Wang. Last but not least, Sharon Huang from 1st year IBMBA bagged the prize for bones round after competing with the SA president.
Although because of the pandemic, we should keep social distance and some of us can’t get together with their love ones, today's event had made every participant put those longing aside, enjoy the heartwarming and funny memories, and make a fantastic night.
【IBMBA & GHRM】Guest Lecture - H@L Architecture Research and Design
Tomasz Sniedziewski and Huang, Kuang Chung
On 30th April 2021, Dr. Ryan Brading invited our alumni IBMBA Mr. Tomasz Sniedziewski, as well as his business partner/architect Huang, Kuang-Chung – to share their experiences, strategies, successes, and current challenges – with the students attending the courses: ‘Sustainability of Global Enterprise’, ‘Entrepreneurship Management and Practice’, and ‘Productions and Operations Management’. This lecture described how architecture urbanism research and design is directly connected with key innovation and sustainability issues, which were to some degree analyzed and discussed during the syllabuses of the three courses. For example, how they designed traffic and sidewalk routes in order to promote the tourism industry in Kenting without affecting the environment.
The lecture was divided into three sections. Firstly, they introduced some of the projects they have completed by emphasizing how they successfully managed these projects. This was followed by a Q&A session. Students had many interesting questions. For example, they asked what the new modern attitudes in architecture are; what are the new sustainable materials in the construction industry; and what type of competition an architectural business has to deal with in this market. These diverse questions came from students from different courses. From Architect Huang and Mr. Sniedziewski’s experience and knowledge, students had this unique opportunity to learn new ways of analyzing in real life how sustainability projects, operational practices and entrepreneurial strategies take place.
In the last section, students were divided into three groups. The guest speakers asked the groups to brainstorm how they would solve an urban project in Hyderabad, India. This project consisted of creating new recreational spaces around the river of this city. As part of their plans, groups considered key issues such as religion practices, weather conditions and physical surroundings.
These groups came out with many interesting ideas. Architect Huang and Mr. Sniedziewski showed a lot of conviction and work ethics during this lecture. Students showed that they enjoyed this opportunity very much because it was very practical and unusual.
【 IBMBA】Guest Lecture - Ørsted Taiwan Ltd. Chih-Chen, Lin
On 14th May 2021, Dr. Ryan Brading invited Mr. Lin Chih-Chen, the Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs at Ørsted, Taiwan – to be the guest speaker for the students attending the courses: ‘Sustainability of Global Enterprise’, ‘Entrepreneurship Management and Practice’, and ‘Productions and Operations Management’.
The topic of this lecture was Sustainable Energy, which is produced with wind turbines by this company. Ørsted is a global leader in offshore wind power plants. This Danish energy sustainable company selected Taiwan as their base for the Asia Pacific. So far, they have completed a very successful project named Formosa I, which is located in Miaoli County. Currently, they are working on a huge project in Changhua County.
Mr. Lin introduced their vision as a sustainable company, and hence their ambitions in changing the global market with electricity. He also described the entire process and technology in manufacturing wind turbine towers. Students were asking about the foundations of the turbine wind towers. Mr., Lin explained that Taiwan’s coastal seabed has a lot of mud sediments transported by rivers from the Mountains. For this reason, they have to put a lot of rocks around the seabed where the tower is located. These rocks eventually become artificial coral reefs, which contributes towards the gradual improvement of Taiwan’s marine life.
The second part of the lecture was brainstorming. Mr., Lin asked students to think about how Ørsted could plan effective CSR strategies in townships, which are on Taiwan's coast, as this Danish company is planning to build offshore wind turbine towers near these towns. Students were divided into three groups, and had 20 minutes to come up with some strategies. Each group presented their innovative ideas. Mr. Lin expressed his views and appreciated their fresh ideas.
We thanked Mr. Lin for his time to come all the way to NSYSU and give us a valuable lecture.
【Activities】College of Management, NSYSU Established Hult Prize Club
In April, 2021, a group of NSYSU MBA students participated in the Global Social Business Startup Competition – Hult Prize Regional Competition for the first time. The team started preparing for the contest since later 2020, and during the contest, team NSYSU competed against 20 nationalities over 14 domestic universities including NTU, THU, NCKU, NCCU. Team NSYSU managed to reach the final 6 from 30 attended teams for a total number of 120 students. Such an extraordinary outcome had motivated the planning team to form an official club, and arranged related industrial speeches on campus. The goal is to promote and encourage more students continuously pursuing further achievement in Hult Prize OnCampus Regional Competition.
On May 5th, 2021, NSYSU Hult Prize Club planning team held a founding ceremony; Director Chien-Yuan Sher, International Relations Office, Director Cindy Lin, Office of Career Development, Extracurricular Activities Division staff, Office of Student Affairs, and Hult Prize club team members, were invited to review the Article of Club in detail during the meeting. During the session, club members agreed to name the club as “Hult Prize Club” and categorized it under Academic Club. The team also took the opportunity to further consult with Student Affairs staff, and Student Association Secretary on notes and precautions as a new founded club.
Hult Prize Club is now officially announced, and with the fluent language capability and the type of events the club plans to hold, it can be foreseen that more foreign students will be attracted to participate in the club events. With the nature and characteristic Hult Prize Club associates, it is with high potential to become one of the few clubs that enable foreign students to take part in. Nevertheless, for the rights of the foreign club members, Prof. Sher suggested the team to establish the Article of Association with English version as well.
Currently, members of Hult Prize Club are in progress of preparing the annual event for this year; the event, at the club’s primary stage, is expected to be mainly arranged with speeches by celebrities from the related social businesses. Later this year, the focus is be shifted to Hult Prize Campus Competition. The club members are all excited about the upcoming Hult Prize Club establishment, as this will empower them to put their dedicated plans into practice.
Hult Prize is the largest international case competition for students, and it is considered as the Nobel Prize for Business, which was founded in 2009; the targeted topics are mostly on major social crisis around the world. The main purpose of holding such global contest, is to encourage students to address these pressing social issues, and in hopes of proposing possible solution. The champions of Hult Prize international finals will be awarded with 1 million dollars of startup funding (equivalent to approximate 20 million TWD).
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【Internationalization】The International Staff Week Meeting with our sister school - KU Leuven
National Sun Yat-sen University College of Management attended the International Staff Week Meeting, held by the sister school - KU Leuven on May 6th, 2021 and May 7th, 2021. This meeting was targeting to maintain good international relations and to improve international exchange issues concerning COVID-19. Representatives of Huei-Fang Yang, the Deputy Director of International Relations, and Thijs Velema, the Deputy Director of International Programs, participated the meeting to discuss about "how to solve the communication barriers between universities" and "promote a new exchange consensus with sister schools" under the epidemic situation.
Since 2020, the pandemic has been continuously affecting all countries, and international education has further faced a lot of challenges. The College of Management has been trying to maintain a good international exchange environment, however, “the local students cannot study abroad, and the international students cannot come in” has been the biggest problem, all kinds of international exchange activities are therefore conducted in an online mode. With all the limitations, apart from developing more flexible contents and methods of online courses and organizing multiple online speeches in both Chinese and English, etc., what can we do more? By taking part in the International Staff Week Meeting, we learned from our sister university of different practices in response to the pandemic and tried to merge them to the existing implementations in order to improve the quality of international education and provide a better international exchange environment for the students.
We are happy to join this meeting to make a progress on our international programs. Though lots of exchange activities were negatively influenced by the pandemic, by step and step improvements, online exchange could more fun and more interesting. The College of Management encourages students to remain proactive and expect for a different exchange experience!
【Activities】Southern Indian New Year Festival Ugadi Celebrated at NSYSU
Ugadi is New Year’s Day in the three Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Karnataka. On April 10, the Indian students at National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU) and Taiwan Telugu Association co-organized the Ugadi New Year's Day celebration in the Performance Hall of the university's Activity Center, inviting all Indian students, community members and friends from all over Taiwan to join in the festivities and enjoy a passionate and wonderful Indian singing and dancing performance. More than 140 people attended the event, which was filled with the festive atmosphere of India.
Two Indian Ph.D. students from the College of Management played key roles in the event. They actively took part in the event organization, including pre-event planning, venue arrangement, sponsorship planning, and even stage set-up, traffic flow control, hosting, performing, and many more roles on the event day. These two doctoral students were Mr. Rama Vandavasi, an alumnus of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Information Management, and Ms. Prasanthi Yepuru, a doctoral student in the Institute of Human Resource Management; they are a married couple.
The couple are from Andhra Pradesh, India, and have been studying in Taiwan since 2013. Their eldest daughter speaks Mandarin natively and introduced Ugadi in Mandarin on the day of the event. Mr. Rama Vandavasi said he was really happy to support Indian cultural activities in NSYSU, as it provides the opportunity to celebrate traditional festivals with their compatriots in a foreign country.
The highlight of the event was the Indian song sung by Ms. Prasanthi Yepuru and the lively Tollywood style dance performance by Mr. Rama Vandavasi and his daughter, which drew enthusiastic cheers and applause from the audience. Their performance was not only joyful and warm but also filled with authentic Indian vibes.
The venue was decorated with colorful floor art known as ‘Rangoli’ and decorations such as mango leaves, which symbolize good luck. Many participants wore traditional costumes such as Kurta and Saree when attending this event.
Dr. Chih-Wen Kuo, Vice President for International Affairs, also attended the event. In his opening remarks, Dr. Kuo welcomed the participants, who had come from all over Taiwan, and expressed that it was his honor to host such a grand celebration of this Indian festival at NSYSU. He mentioned that the Office of International Affairs were also partly sponsoring the event. He said, “In order to encourage international students in NSYSU to organize cultural and festive events from their own countries, the school has just last year approved ‘NSYSU Guidelines for Subsidizing International Activities Organized by International Students’; we hope that international students will be able to enjoy their nostalgia by organizing cultural activities from their home countries while studying in Taiwan, and at the same time help their teachers and other students here learn more about their countries and cultures.”
Ugadi is a traditional New Year Festival celebrated in Andhra Pradesh and two other states in southern and central India; the Telugu people celebrate the New Year from March to April every year, in accordance with the Hindu lunisolar calendar. This festival is their equivalent of the Taiwanese Lunar New Year. Many think that the famous Diwali is the Indian New Year festival, but in fact only a few states in northern India celebrate Diwali as New Year. In the vast majority of India, each ethnic group still holds on to its own traditional New Year customs and its own cultural traditions.
(This article has been provided by the Office of International Affairs and edited by the College of Management.)