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May Chan

The  Tuck School of Business, one of the most established business schools in the United States, is undertaking a strategic review in response to  globalisation.
It was founded in 1900 as the first graduate school of management in the country. The school prides itself on its traditions for excellence: small class-size, full-time professorship, and its focus on one degree programme, the MBA.
Paul Danos,  dean of Tuck School of Business,  said the review, which is expected to be completed by 2012, would focus on globalisation, core structure and content, leadership and student access to faculty.
A strategic committee has been set up to revise the MBA programme with a stronger global focus, and expand students' overseas trips for studies and course work.
Recently, there has been more emphasis on global experience in student admission, and the inclination for students to work abroad after graduation, so as to ensure that students acquire a global mindset.
The school has increased the intake of international students for the 2009 academic year to more than one-third, 36 per cent of its total student intake of 250, out of the 3,000-odd applications it receives. And 16 per cent of the total intake will be US minorities. Thirty nationalities are represented in the programme.
'Almost everything has to do with globalisation,' Professor Danos said. 'We need more depth, into how to do business in China, Indonesia and India, with their specific regulations and business profiles.
'When hiring academic staff, we will also pay attention to their global experience, like in China and India.
'We require [our academic staff] to tell us how that makes them global players. Everyone in the class is going to get some non-domestic experience in the next few years.'
The global mixture, together with the focus on leadership, would benefit students who had grown up in an education system that emphasised competition instead of co-operation, Professor Danos said, including students from Hong Kong.
The MBA curriculum is designed so that 75 per cent of the course work involves team projects and presentations, and that less than 50 per cent of credits will go to individual work.
Business ethics has been integrated as part of the core courses, in reaction to the increasing concerns over corporate social responsibility and fair-play in business, in light of the recent subprime crisis in the United States.
The programme places a firm emphasis on leadership and incorporates programmes that include feedback and coaching, corporate citizenship, ethics and a broad range of extracurricular activities aimed at fostering leadership.
Professor Danos said in the global business community executives had to co-operate with people from different cultures and backgrounds and the MBA programme was similar.
'And if the team fails, you fail, no matter how well you perform. It is not unlike leading a company. We train our students in learning a co-operative style of working, which is unusual in the world, even in the US,' he said.
The professor added that the business school would strengthen one of its distinguishing features: small class-size.
The school is also increasing its number of faculties by 20 per cent, without increasing class size, so that there will be 60 faculty members by 2012, with one-third of them being from overseas.
Only full-time professors will be hired, and more than 200 visiting speakers per year will teach at the school under close supervision of the faculty.
'This is the most unique feature of Tuck,' Professor Danos said. 'We are driving to a breakthrough position on a core distinction of a Tuck education, the relationships between faculty and student.
'We want our students to be the beneficiaries of more sophisticated, intimate and enriching dialogue with Tuck professors.
'We are very proud of our small class-size, and our emphasis on the relationship between individual students and the faculty.
'We won't dilute the academic quality of our school by offering part-time programmes, hiring part-time staff, or offering more programmes.
Less than 10 business schools in the world can offer that type of education,' he said.
These practices were different from the mainstream practices in business education, Professor Danos said, adding that the loyal support of the school's 8,500 Tuck alumni made it possible to implement such practices.
Over the past five years, the school had received US$110 million from alumni.
The close ties between the school and alumni could substantially benefit graduates from Tuck as they could easily connect through the beliefs and values nurtured at the school.
'You have 8,500 world class business leaders around the world holding on to the same philosophy, which is not like any other business school,' the dean said.



Globalisation prompts US school to review programme