The NANYANG MBA

Professor Gillian Yeo, Interim Dean, Nanyang Business School, will be holding regular meetings with faculty and staff to provide them an update and an opportunity to interact with her and the leadership team.

Addressing her first school meeting on Monday, May 18th, as Interim Dean, Prof Yeo said that she plans to hold a school meeting at least once every semester.

Meanwhile, the popular monthly Friday Winedown session held in the Dean's lobby will continue.

Prof Yeo said that as she had highlighted in an interview with The Business Times, which coincidently had been published that morning, former Dean, Professor Jitendra Singh, had stepped down due to family reasons.

While Prof Singh had joined as Dean in September 2007, his family had joined him in January 2008. But as his daughters were unable to adjust to life in Singapore, the family moved back to the United States in August 2008. Prof Singh had been making monthly trips to visit his family but found that commuting between Singapore and the US was not working out, and decided to step down.

But all is not lost. Prof Singh, who is now Senior Advisor to NTU President, will be spending several weeks every year at the school. His professional contacts and intellect would be available to help take the school forward.

Prof Yeo said in her 20 years or so with NBS – of which she was one of the longest serving faculty member, the school had had four Deans. Each Dean, along with his leadership team, faculty and staff, had taken the school from strength to strength and it was now firmly on an upward trajectory.

The results were there for everyone to see: Our MBA programme had been ranked 24th worldwide by the Financial Times this year.

Prof Yeo said that NBS has a strong team and with everybody pulling together, the school was moving ahead strongly. We had been ranked in the top 100 by the Economist for the past five years and for the past three years by the Financial Times, with the ranking improving every year.

Former Dean, Prof Singh, had helped to articulate the vision for building a world-class business school. Key to this is building world-class faculty. Another 10 to 15 faculty members will be joining the school this year, Prof Yeo disclosed.

Another important step was for the school to work towards creating world-class knowledge with an Asian focus and special interest in China and India.

Prof Yeo highlighted that just last week an MOU was signed with China Construction Bank – the world's second largest bank, to train more than 700 of its senior executives this year.

Besides the MBA, the EMBA programs – both in English and Chinese, are doing well. Among the English EMBAs, the entrepreneurship track with support from Spring Singapore had particularly been received well.  Other new EMBAs in specialized industry tracks were being developed. 

Earlier this year, the school had joined hands with the BI Norwegian School of Management to launch the shipping, offshore and finance Double MBA programme.  Other new programmes in energy management, innovation and design management, and in life sciences are planned.

Similarly, in the Nanyang Fellows Programme the MIT segment has been restructured into a sustainable development segment next year.

Another new segment in the Nanyang Fellows program will be one on leadership and finance, which will be offered in association with the Wharton School. The MIT and Wharton segments will also be open to NBS alumni and EMBA participants.

At the undergraduate level, Prof Yeo highlighted that last year when the double degree programme leading to a Bachelor in Accountancy and a Bachelor in Business was introduced, over 1,000 applications (with the majority having straight As) had been received for the 100 places available.

NBS will continue to focus on developing leadership competencies and other soft skills in our programs.

Prof Yeo stressed that the emphasis will be on both rigour and relevance in all the work at NBS.

The EQUIS accreditation team completed its review in April and has been very impressed with the accomplishments at the school.

Looking ahead, Prof Yeo said that the school is working to see how it can leverage on technology to build the next generation business school.

Her vision is to build up the substance and enhance the form through strategic positioning and build the brand image.

Prof Yeo said even as the university is drawing up a new master plan for the campus and will provide for a new building for NBS, funds are meanwhile being made available to spruce up the school and do renovations.

Moving forward Prof Yeo said that to be successful we need to have high quality faculty, high quality students, good infrastructure and a strong leadership team. It is not just the effort of one person in the team; we need a whole team to work together cohesively. Over the past 20 years, NBS has grown from strength to strength with the contributions of the Dean, leadership team, faculty and staff. We will carry on as a team to move forward and upward in our trajectory.

--By Narendra Aggarwal, Director, Public Affairs, NBS