By SOPHIKO TSOTSKOLAURI 14', HICHAM LEFNAOUI 14'

October 24, 2014 was a busy day for students at Peking University HSBC Business School, trying to get as much as possible from the experienced and well-known educators from universities all over the world as they participated in the Global Dean’s Forum.  We managed to interview educators from the USA, Brunei and Norway.

Alison Davis-Blake, born in Palo Alto, California, USA is Dean of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Davis-Blake is the school’s first female dean, and at the time of her appointment she was the highest-ranking female dean at any U.S. business school.

When asked about what more the Chinese educational system needs, she  responded that the most beneficial aspects to any business schools are diverse students and engagement in the classroom. More exposure to diversity, more active study abroad, increasing the number of international students studying in China and engagement in the classroom where people are actively involved in dialogue, will be helpful to build excellence and action-based learning.

However, Davis-Blake thinks it’s a mistake to blindly adopt anything from another culture without considering whether it fits and its impact on the Chinese educational system. So, part of the purpose of the conferences and forums like the GDF is to share ways of approaching education, so that Chinese universities can adapt ideas to local culture.

We received a very interesting answer when she was asked what she would do differently if she had a chance to go back to her student years.

She said she would make sure that she took more advantage of seeing different parts of the world, because the world has become much more interconnected and smaller since she was a student. She pointed out that the world is constantly changing and that students should take every opportunity to explore the other parts of the world and diverse cultures, considering that opportunities have the tendency to disappear quickly with very little chance of falling into our laps once again.

Davis-Blake stated that all countries historically evolve as the province of men,  and now we see women entering the universities and the work force in larger and larger numbers, although not so much at the top levels yet. But she thinks that considering what we have experienced so far, women are as capable of making valuable contributions in the workplace as men, and as the time evolves, she believes we’ll see more women reaching leadership levels in the future.

Her success story is very much like many other women’s stories, who reached high levels after starting from the bottom. She benefited from very strong educational institutions and the mentors who helped her along the way and also from persistent and hard work.

As for the biggest problem she encountered on her career path, she said that sometimes people don’t believe that women can be good leaders, and you have to prove yourself more than men do. She said that when she was a young professor one of her colleagues commented to her with a bit of curiosity that her students respected her very much. Davis-Blake answered, “On the last day of our class both of our students may respect us the same, but on the first day of class respect is yours to lose, you have it.  But the respect is mine to earn, I don’t have it.” So, unfortunately, women have to work harder with more persistence and willingness to overcome any obstacle along the way to get to the highest levels.

Joyce Teo is the Vice-President of Global Affairs at University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). She is also currently Dean of UBD School of Business and Economics, as well as Director of the institute of Policy Studies. She received her PhD (Economics) from the University of Queensland where she majored in Labor Economics and Econometrics.

She was full of great expectations for the Global Deans Forum. It was her third visit to Shenzhen, but the first to the HSBC Business School. She said she was impressed.

Her university  partners with the HSBC Business School.

Teo predicts that by  2020 more people will be speaking Mandarin and trying to learn from Asia’s biggest economy – China. She forecasts more interaction between Chinese and Brunei professionals in the business world.

She said that even though China is engaging in a strong manufacturing industry, she thinks the Chinese are trying to make sure that they set an example in sustainability and environmental change, which she thinks is admirable.  She said that Chinese are trying to strike a balance to ensure that the nation’s industries are not causing increased pollution, which is inevitable for the highly industrialized countries.  Seeing the effort  the nation is making to cut down pollution in Beijing and Shanghai, for instance, makes her “honestly impressed.”

Teo was reluctant to say she was a success story. She started out as a young academic and after 20 years of hard work and diligence she managed to become dean of UBD and then its Vice-President of Global affairs.  She said that her passionate personality is the one thing that helped her on the way up to earn the respect of her students and colleagues. This passion became her driving force and energy to always move forward.

Froystein Gjesdal is Rector of NHH Norwegian School of Economics and has made important contributions to developing  Norwegian economics as a field of research and teaching in Norway.

He considers the Chinese educational system to be on the right track. He thinks blending different styles of different schools and cultures will be even more beneficial, for example, by encouraging more interaction among local and international students. The idea is to blend the Western and Chinese educational systems. He said that the Chinese system is better in terms of hard-core academic learning and the American system is better in terms of challenging and expressing your opinions and views on things. He calls it “the Master and Challenge.” First, students need to understand what the professor is teaching, but then they have to take an active ownership of it and challenge it. His teaching method is an example of this. During a one-hour class he teaches for 40 minutes and during the remaining 20 minutes he divides students into groups.  Each group should come up with a challenge for the professor, such as what is wrong with a certain theory and what can they do better.

Gjesdal said the best way to succeed is to work on yourself and develop a global mindset, to get a comfort level in strange and different environments and have an open minded attitude, not necessarily criticizing what you don’t agree with or don’t understand, but taking the other’s point of view and trying to step into their shoes.

He thinks that PHBS is a strong and progressive school. Its infrastructure is beautiful, students are satisfied and  the dean’s office is strong and efficient, he said.

There are two skills, according to Gjesdal, that are important for students to get the most from graduate school. First is to feel comfortable in different environments. Use the chance to actively develop that skill by seeking out people from other cultures and engaging with them. The second important  skill set he calls “Critical Analyzing.” When you read an article or study a model or technique, level one is to understand the material and how it works, but the next step is to feel comfortable criticizing the model you are working with.  Does it apply to different, complex and confused environments? What are its limitations? It’s our way of thinking that differentiates us from others, he said.