Friday, March 20, 2009

Xiamen University EMBA program in Integrated Marketing Communications

One of the privileges of being a professor is the freedom to be an academic entrepreneur. Tonight in Xiamen China (a beautiful city on the China east coast near Taiwan), we celebrated the creation of an executive MBA (for senior managers and owners of corporations) that emphasizes integrated marketing communications (IMC). My colleague and former student, Kevin Mao, and I opened discussions with Xiamen University' Graduate School of Management 2 years ago. With the cooperation of the faculty of IMC; we will begin to teach classes in the Graduate School of Management at the highly rated Xiamen University on IMC. Thirty-five excited EMBA students (including more than one Chinese millionaire, two newspaper reporter and the Channel 2 Xiamen (Business), a University Vice-President and various deans experienced a dedication to studies over the next two years. IMC and selected Kellogg faculty will come to Xiamen beginning this Fall to teach in an intensive 2-4 days the EMBAs. While the degree and course granted is strictly from Xiamen University; the support given by our IMC and NU faculty has encouraged the first IMC program in China. I spoke to the group about research supporting their actions, trends in social media giving them new strategies and tools for marketing and communications and the fact that Northwestern's IMC program graduates over 30 Chinese students each year who should be excited to find CEO's of Chinese corporations who understand IMC hiring in the future.