CLFM Faculty

Prepare for Program’s Future through Studies at MIT

By Patty Eames, LFM-SDM Communications Assistant – December 14, 2007

December 2007 marks the end of a four-month stint at MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing (LFM) program for five faculty members from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). The faculty have spent the fall semester as students in MIT courses carefully studying how they are taught and what learnings they find to be the most valuable to Chinese culture, business and manufacturing. Come next February, back at their home institution in Shanghai, China, they will each resume their regular roles and teach the same courses they now follow at MIT in the newly opened China Leaders for Manufacturing (CLFM) program. This is the fifth semester that SJTU faculty members have visited the MIT campus in such a capacity. The exchange –type program allows faculty members in the CLFM program to learn firsthand how the LFM faculty prepares its students to be future leaders in manufacturing and global operations. Faculty are engaged both in LFM classes and committees to see how all facets of the program function.

CLFM Faculty Members: (left to right) Lu Lin, Xiong Zhenhua, Chen Xin, Zhou Liang, and Zhong Genyuan

Lin Lu is an associate professor in management at the Antai College of Economics and Management at SJTU. She is currently following two classes at MIT Sloan School of Management that she will teach in the coming semester for CLFM. Through her studies in Communication for Managers and Organizational Processes she hopes to learn teaching methods and gather course materials to apply in her classroom next year.

An Associate Professor in Accounting and Finance at SJTU, Xin Chen is also taking two courses during the fall semester, one in financial accounting and the other in financial theory in preparation for his teaching. In addition to sharing knowledge of course materials, he thinks that the experience of studying these courses at MIT “is a great opportunity to learn about the teaching styles of academic mentors and how they interact with students.”

Three other SJTU faculty members are following courses across engineering and business management disciplines. Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Zhenhua Xiong is currently taking MIT’s Manufacturing Processes and Systems course. Genyuan Zhong, Assistant Professor in the area of microeconomics, is studying to teach Economic Analysis for Business Decision, while Liang Zhou, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, follows Micro/Nano Process Technology for his CLFM course preparation.

Much of the professors’ focus has been on collecting materials they will use in classes, as well as on determining how to adapt the structure of MIT courses to SJTU’s style and academic calendar. Because SJTU’s academic semester is slightly longer than MIT’s, they are preparing new units to add to the course syllabi in order to fit this schedule. Other faculty members are researching China-specific case studies to use in business courses in which current materials focus more heavily on U.S.-based company issues.

Based on their experience at MIT, the faculty members would also like to work toward improving the infrastructure for communication within the CLFM program. They have found that digital common spaces like Sloan Space provide a user-friendly environment to distribute course materials and host discussion groups about coursework. The faculty, staff and students in CLFM span 20 miles of campus, so a shared virtual area such as this would make a large difference in their academic community.

Overall, the five CLFM faculty members say that they have enjoyed their time at MIT and the advantages of living in Boston for the semester. Xin Chen remarks that Boston is a convenient and beautiful place to live in and that he enjoyed the authenticity of the Chinese food in the area as well. Others say will fondly remember the beautiful autumn landscape along the Charles River and the campus life they were a part of this semester. They look forward to teaching the courses at SJTU in 2008, to continuing their collaboration with MIT, as well as strengthening the CLFM program and the opportunities it offers its students.