Letter from the Dean

The alumni of SWUFE are our trusted connections to society and reliable resources for future education at SWUFE. Our mission is to connect them to the school and to each other, to support the university’s goal of teaching and research, to enhance student opportunities at the SBA, and to make it possible for SBA students to cultivate contacts and learn more about the ongoing climate in the fields of business and management. We also aim to provide valuable services to our alumni through high-level forums and career development training programs, encouraging a dynamic atmosphere to inspire new ideas and further strengthen SBA alumni contacts.

Industry has undergone globalization, and it is now academia’s turn. SBA seeks to bridge the gap between Western and Chinese educational systems via active involvement in international communication with world-class business schools. In summer 2007, an SBA delegation visited many well-known universities in the US, including New York University, City University of New York, University of Delaware, Washington State University, Rice University, and University of Hawaii. In particular, we signed a cooperative agreement with the University of Delaware to promote future student and faculty exchanges between the two institutions. Concept, idea, vision, methods, and management are the aspects we pay special attention to in this mutually beneficial cooperation. And we believe this is just the beginning of SBA’s exciting course of influence expansion and image upgrading into the future.

Research topics come from industry and the results in turn benefit industry. The keyword is “win-win”. We focus on industry collaboration, especially with companies in Western China, as an integrated approach to allow our faculty members and students to tackle real-world problems by identifying the main business issues, generating and analyzing potential solutions and presenting recommendations to our industrial counterparts. We are now seeking to work with leading companies on practical problems for the transference of knowledge into business value in a more effective and efficient way.

Teaching should be dynamic, adaptive, and most importantly, innovative. Through decades of disciplinary development, the SBA has established major strengths in the areas of business management, marketing, tourism and hospitality, advertising, and logistics, through accumulating teaching experiences and improving pedagogical methodologies. In addition to imparting conventional management education, we also attach great importance to the reliance and incarnation of disciplinary advantages of the university to offer an array of programs highlighted by information related to other key subjects such as corporate finance, accounting and economics.
In the 2005-2006 school year, we launched a new curriculum that focuses on analyzing complex business problems and developing innovative solutions to those challenges. These highly rigorous and integrative courses were primarily designed to achieve the objective of honing our students’ analytic skills. More recently, we further revised our curriculum to formally bring lectures from industrial leaders to our classroom, which helps our students to follow the industrial and economic trend and allows them to apply their analytical skills for realistic problem solving.

Universities exist because of students. Our mission is to educate them and serve them well. All activities in the SBA should contribute directly or indirectly to this mission. We aim to equip our students with a powerful theoretical foundation, holistic business perspective and deep management insight through the rich experiences of in-class learning and various internship opportunities. Our well-maintained cooperation with the Jinjiang Hotel and Jiuzhaigou tourist resort offer the hospitality majors (both graduate and undergraduate students) valuable opportunities to put theory into practice. We are now striving to build up strategic partnerships with companies and organizations in a greater variety of industries, so as to benefit our students in cutting through the complexity that accompanies increasing social, technological and economic change, before they begin their careers.
This is a time of tremendous change and immense challenges. We feel proud of what we have achieved in the past, and yet at the same time, we assume more responsibilities to prepare for an even brighter future. The School of Business Administration will spare no effort in carving a leading position in the field of business and management education in western China as it continues to make great strides in internal reform and outward development. I believe, with the joint efforts of our outstanding alumni, industrial partners and international collaborators, the School of Business Administration will surely have a splendid and wonderful future.

Dr. Bintong Chen is currently the Dean of SBA. He obtained a dual bachelor’s degree in naval architecture and ocean engineering and in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1981. He then pursued a master’s degree in systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where he subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in operations research and management from the Wharton School of Business. Since then, he has taught at the Department of Management and Operations at Washington State University (WSU) as an assistant, associate and full professor. As a faculty member, Dr. Chen received numerous accolades in research and teaching, among them: the Outstanding Teacher Award in 2004 and 2007; Dean’s Excellence Fellow in 2004, 2006 and 2007; the Don and Mary Ann Parachini Faculty Fellowship in 2006; and most recently, the 2007 Excellent Advisor Award from the Graduate and Professional Student Association. He was also received a grant from the National Natural Sciences Foundation from the Chinese government in 2006. During his career, he has published over 30 research papers, 5 of which have been recognized as among the most cited in his discipline during a ten-year span. He is also currently a senior editor for the Production and Operations Management Journal. Dr. Chen’s research interests include optimization techniques and their applications for business problems, business logistics and supply chain management. Dr. Chen divides his time between WSU in Pullman, Washington, where his wife and daughter live, and SWUFE in Chengdu.