Monthly Archives: November 2011

Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) has a new main campus which is on a sprawling expanse about 1 hour’s drive from our hotel. The campus currently has about 22000 students, most who live on campus. We were met by Ms. Ellie Zhu from the Office of International Affairs of the School of Business Administration. Ms. Zhu led us to a meeting room where we were greeted by Dean Dr. Dan Yang, Dean of SWUFE’s School of Business Administration, Dr. Ye, Director of the Department of Logistics Management, Dr. Xiao, Assoc Professor of International Business and Dr. Chen, Assoc Professor of HRM. We discussed the long relationship between Baruch and SWUFE, the tremendous things SWUFE is known for, and their goals for the future of their school. Dean Yang was extremely proud as he told us of all the wonderful SWUFE alumni in very high places in banks and large corporations around the world.
We talked about SWUFE students studying abroad and what is required for them to be successful. SWUFE has a number of wonderful relationships with fine educational institutions around the globe and, besides Baruch, they currently have students studying at institutions such as Texas A&M, Carnegie Melon, Cornell, Oxford (UK) to name a few.
We ended the discussion having shared a lot of ideas, and promising to either continue the conversations – or at least to seek out the right contacts at Baruch to move the conversations along.
After lunch I addressed a group of both undergraduate and masters students. They wanted to hear about how to apply to graduate schools in the US, what programs Baruch / Zicklin has to offer, and what we look for as we review applications for our various programs. Standing in front of that group of young people, I couldn’t help but think of how difficult it must be to make the decision to leave your family and your country to study abroad. Many looked excited as they thought about the prospect. I hope we see many of these wonderful SWUFE students at Baruch soon.
Tomorrow we’re off to Beijing …

We had another wonderful day in Chengdu – thanks especially to our hosts from SWUFE. We began with a visit to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. This base was established in 1987 with 6 Giant Pandas rescued from the wild. Today there are close to 100 Giant Pandas living there. We were lucky enough to see many of them – especially the latest group of about one dozen three month olds. It is interesting to note that Giant Pandas do not easily mate – and when they are successful, since the babies are so incredibly small, many times they do not survive. The base has done much research in perfecting the ability to artificially inseminate the Giant Panda. If you want to learn more about the Chengdu Research Base visit their web site at http://www.panda.org.cn/english/index.htm.
Our next stop was a “typical” Chinese lunch. For all of us from the US – I’m not sure where our idea of Chinese food came from. Nothing here looked anything like what we get from our local Chinese restaurant. Everything we ate was delicious – and probably much healthier than what we get from the US Chinese restaurants. When we asked our guide if the meal would be ending with a fortune cookie, he had no idea what we were talking about!
In the afternoon, we visited the Wuhou Temple. The temple was built in the 6th century to commemorate Zhuge Liang, known for his great wisdom. We ended the day with a stroll through JINLI Street – an ancient street which was recently restored and opened to the public in 2004. I has many wonderful shops and places to relax and eat.
I think that we have now seen everything our Baruch students from Chengdu advised were “must see” places. Tomorrow we finally get to visit SWUFE.