Sejong-Syracuse MBA program nears 10 years
Ted Wallin, dean of the Sejong Syracuse MBA program, speaks in his office at Sejong University in Seoul on Wednesday during an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily. By Lee Chan-weon
The end of this month marks the 10-year anniversary of the founding of the Sejong-Syracuse MBA program, which has provided its mostly foreign students with the opportunity to pursue a degree in business administration and experience a multicultural student body and faculty from six continents.
At the center of the program is Ted Wallin, an emeritus professor at Syracuse University who also serves as dean of the SSMBA Program at Sejong University in western Seoul. In his office, crowded with colorful artifacts, the professor sat down with the Korea JoongAng Daily on Wednesday to discuss how the program has evolved and his vision for the future.
Wallin has been with the program from the beginning, teaching classes and staying in Seoul for at least one month out of the year. He was appointed to his current position last year.
The program was started by Choo Myung-gun, the son of the founder of Sejong University. Choo is a graduate of Syracuse University in upstate New York.
During that time, he has seen many students - about 500 in total - graduate from the program.
“We have students who do many types of work,” said Wallin, adding that most are involved in economics, industry, politics, managing and consulting. There are exceptions - one alumnus appeared in a Korean electronics advertisement in North America.
The school’s diversity is just one reason the students have been able to excel. Compared to the beginning, there is now more competition for acceptance into the program. Also, more students are embassy workers from other countries.
Sixty percent of the students in the program are foreign, a 10 percent increase compared to when it began. There are usually roughly 50 students in a class from fall to spring.
“There ... probably have been 20 different cultures, at least 10 represented at one time,” Wallin said. “We’re quite good in mixing different cultures together.”
However, most of those who take the course at Sejong University are people sent by their companies or embassies to expand their education and take on more important roles in their respective firms. The program has seen limited success in attracting students that come on their own to study, which amounts to only 20 to 25 percent of the program’s student body, according to the dean.
The SSMBA program initially offered a 50 percent discount on tuition for foreign students, but now that discount has been lowered to 30 percent. Korean students who take the program, which is conducted only in English, are not eligible for the discount, which some feel is unfair considering the full tuition amounts to roughly 60 million won ($53,300).
The school hopes to expand the number of students gradually, but “we need a lot more PR,” said Wallin. “Very few come here to study; they’ve come here for other purposes. And then discover the program here.”
Advertising for the program is usually done the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.
“Each of the cultures represented here operate in close-knit communities. The word passes quickly,” he said.
In order to attract more students from outside Korea, Wallin hopes to expand the school’s career services to bring more guidance to students, whether they hold jobs or not.
“Students who are not already set with a career track in their company or government agency would need more nurturing to discover their interests,” he said.
More classes should be available in English at the university, Wallin said, as classes currently taught only in Korean are inaccessible to foreign students because of the communication barrier.
“So much of the communication here is yet in Korean. Though we have faculty here who know a great deal about franchising - our non-Korean students can’t access them very easily because they have no communication leg with them, or with their publications or their literature.
“And so without sounding ethnocentric, I’ve been pushing this university to do more in English. It’s absolutely critical if they want to expand the number of international students studying here, which they do. Not solely in the SSMBA program, but the undergraduate as well,” said the dean, who added that the school had embarked on a 10-year program to expand English classes in the undergraduate portion of the school.
“Why would you want to study management in Korea? I think that’s a longer-term issue that we have to speak about. [Korea has] an industry structure which is powerful, ranking very high in terms of global economies, and present in Korea are companies which are world leaders,” he said, “but the world doesn’t know that.”
As for now, the student council is gearing up to spread the word about the program through the Internet, by using popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Students take 48 credits over the course of two years. Classes can be taken in the evening hours and over the weekend for those who hold day jobs. There are 10 full-time professors from Sejong University on the faculty and 8 to 10 additional visiting professors during the course of the year, according to the dean, numbers which he hopes to expand.
Upon completion of the program, students receive an MBA from Sejong University in addition to a certification of completion from Syracuse University.
By Christine Kim [christine.kim@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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