By IMBA Campus Reporter Andrea Gonzalez
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| Distinguished professors, multicultural environment and the opportunity to study abroad, some of IMBA´s advantages mentioned by Professor Shang. Photo: IMBA |
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| Prospective students attended the event in search of information of the IMBA program. Photo IMBA |
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| Participants had the opportunity to ask questions to speakers about their experiences with the program. Photo IMBA |
On Saturday November 3, the International Master in Business Administration (IMBA) program held their annual information session for prospective candidates. The Yuanta Lecture Hall at the College of Commerce was filled with over a hundred potential students in search of information about the program and its features.
The session began with a speech from Professor Shari Shang, Director of the IMBA program, as she explained about the many advantages of this master including an academic distinguished faculty, a multicultural environment and the opportunity to study abroad through the dual-degree or exchange programs.
As for the student body, Professor Shang mentioned three common characteristics from applicants that pursue the IMBA. She explains that students who join the IMBA family seek to be career switchers, career enhancers or entrepreneurs. After completing the program, many students have changed their industry or even their career path. As mentioned, the diversity of the program includes not only international and local students, but also students with different academic backgrounds and work experience. Thus, the IMBA students could be engineers, who after finishing their courses moved to financial or marketing fields. Professor Shang shared some examples of Alumni that got promoted while studying and now hold regional management positions in their companies. In addition, she talked about Alumni who decided to start up their own business, such as Tomasz Hasinski founder of Runivores, a company that offers energy bars for runners.
Alumni and current students also participated in the session, sharing their insights and experiences with the program. One of the speakers was Alumni Richard DeVries, who started his consultant firm. He emphasized the importance of the international feature of the program to develop networking. He shared that as a student he was able to meet other foreign classmates who later assisted him with information of their countries as he was doing market research for his job.
Local student Alex Tsai, who is currently in his second year of the program, shared his experience as a working student and how he manages his busy academic and work schedule. Alex is a Regional Sales Manager for QNAP system Inc. As part of his job responsibilities, he has to travel abroad to meet his customers, forcing him to skip some classes. One of the common questions from prospective candidates was how to organize their class schedule along with their job meetings or business travels. Alex explained that good communication is the key to succeed in both your work and the IMBA. He keeps this communication with his boss, IMBA office, professors and classmates. He explained that the program promotes team building, thus many of the classes required group projects. By keeping clear communication and good attitude, he has received support from his team members as he needed to attend business trips. His motto “Leverage life”, as advice to future students to learn to balance work, the IMBA and their personal life.
The event had the participation of Ben Un-Pan Ian, dual degree student. He attended EMLYON Business School, one of the leading business schools in France. One of the uniqueness of the NCCU-IMBA is its dual degree program, that allows students to gain two university degrees, while studying abroad in one of the partner schools. These schools are located in Germany, France, U.S. or Netherlands. At the same time, international students from the partner universities come to Taiwan and join the IMBA courses along with the regular students, enriching the class diversity. Ian shared his experience of studying abroad, while explaining that the program not only opened opportunities to meet new people and participate in school activities, but also to explore and travel along Europe.
The event finished with a Q&A session, as many attendees were eager to ask about the program opportunities and looking more insight from the speaker´s favorite courses and experiences with the IMBA.
Overall the event had a positive response from the audience, as one of the prospective candidates, Gloria Lo, shared her interest in the dual degree and exchange program, which are her goals to apply in the IMBA. Along with another prospective candidate Javier Leon, who is Guatemalan-Chinese, who mentioned that in his search for graduate programs thinks that the IMBA-NCCU program has a “well prepared curriculum” with a lot of opportunities for networking.
