Exposure to Diverse Perspectives

Access Point: Shanghai, China

Fairfield Dolan alumna Aihua Hou MBA’24 is the national retail manager for one of the largest condiment producers in China. Her company is thriving and she wants to be on the team to take it public. Anticipating its future bid, Hou sought a graduate degree program in business whose professors have Wall Street knowledge and global experience. She found that and so much more at Fairfield University. A recent graduate of the University’s Shanghai MBA program, a partnership between the Charles F. Dolan School of Business and Golden Education, Hou is now ready to lead.

Hou first learned about Fairfield Dolan’s Shanghai MBA program two years ago. She was then enrolled in a financial digitalization training course offered through Golden Education, a worldwide leader in technology-driven vocational education. The instructor of the course recommended Fairfield’s program to her and she immediately recognized it as a good match.

“The Shanghai MBA program was very appealing to me because of Fairfield’s unique location,” said Hou. “Given the school’s proximity to New York, I knew its professors would have valuable insights on Wall Street.”

Fairfield launched its MBA program in Shanghai in 2020. Part of a larger mission to expand the University’s footprint and to offer a high-quality Jesuit education on a global scale, the Shanghai MBA is designed for business professionals who want to pursue an advanced business degree while continuing their professional careers.

The curriculum for the Shanghai MBA program is finance focused but offers the same core courses in marketing, management, and leadership as taken by students in Fairfield Dolan’s domestic MBA program. Shanghai students take one class per month for 12 months and typically complete their coursework during evenings and weekends.

Because courses are taught primarily online, Hou found the program flexible and manageable. Articles, case studies, and other materials were available in advance of class, so she could review them prior to live sessions with professors and classmates. Active participation was the norm, she said.

An unexpected highlight of the program was exposure to diverse perspectives, Hou noted, especially those influenced by cultural differences between the United States and China. She believes those perspectives will serve her well in her current position because her company is foreign invested. She is poised and ready to serve as a strategic bridge between its corporate executives in China and its stakeholders in America and, more broadly, the Western world.

Many valuable and varied viewpoints were provided by David P. Schmidt, PhD, associate professor of management at the Dolan School, who taught Hou’s course in business law and ethics. Hou appreciated that Dr. Schmidt challenged students by posing difficult ethical questions and scenarios for discussion.

7,388 Miles from Fairfield

“In one memorable exchange, our professor shared that some American business schools teach a distorted version of the Chinese proverb that teaching someone to fish is better than giving them a fish,” said Hou. “The variant says if you teach a man to fish, you lose your influence.” Though Hou would like to believe the distortion represents a cultural difference between East and West, she acknowledged it is prevalent across the entire business world, even in China.

Dr. Schmidt recalled with pride the lively discussion around that session’s ethical question. “Ultimately,” he said, “our students in Shanghai concluded that there is no limit to doing good deeds.”

Hou’s classmate, Hui Wang MBA’24, appreciated the format and structure of the courses in the Shanghai MBA program because they provided ample opportunity to grasp material before submitting assignments and engaging in class discussions and group work. Her favorite course was her most challenging, and she was glad she could absorb its lectures at her own pace. “In my investment analysis class, I spent a lot of time watching course videos over and over again to understand them before handing in assignments,” she said.

Wang, who is self-employed, said that studying at Fairfield Dolan offered her a chance to broaden her horizons, grow her network, master essential business knowledge, and accomplish something worthwhile. “All that,” she said, “made the MBA a meaningful journey.”

In May, Hou and Wang traveled with 12 of their fellow classmates to Connecticut to participate in Fairfield University’s 74th Graduate Commencement Exercises. They were the first student representatives of the Shanghai MBA program to ever do so. Hou said she was “honored to attend the ceremony and to be an equal among graduates from so many different backgrounds.” Because of the Fairfield Dolan’s expansion to Shanghai, she now proudly counts herself among more than 200 Fairfield alumni in China.

Related Stories