PARCOURS GLOBAL BUSINESS

Studying at NTU in Singapore (1/2) - BBA Global Business | EDHEC Business School

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Unforgettable
Ambitious
Incredible
Unexpected
Fast-paced
Maturing
Incredible
Enriching

My name is Sasha Chernyshenko.

Olexander Chernyshenko, PhD
Associate Dean of Executive Education
Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources Management
Nanyang Business School

So currently I'm associate Dean for Executive Education. To be world-ranked you need to be comprehensive, so what they did was they added additional schools: biological science, social science and medical school and now we are just this full comprehensive university of 34,000 students. Of course Nanyang Business school benefits from overall being inside of a comprehensive university. 

Dattatreya Allampalli, PhD
Operations Director
Executive Education
Nanyang Business School

In line with the design of the EDHEC Global BBA program the stint in France or at the EDHEC Business School was to lay the foundation for business courses and also some of the language courses that the students would take. When they moved to the UCLA Extension they took some of the advanced courses in international business, entrepreneurship and innovation, so what was needed as per the leadership team of EDHEC was the finance courses, and thereafter, you know to prepare them for international roles and career, was a new course in the international marketing and international business. 

Julien Cayla, PhD
Faculty DIrector
Bachelor Thesis Mentor
Nanyang Business School

I think the particularity of this program is that it’s global from the outset so it's a global BBA that is designed for students to gain a very global experience and we're also lucky to have you know students who themselves often are very global. You know I'm very surprised and enthusiastic about the profile of our students who often speak you know several languages, so I would say it is for students who are global in terms of their aspirations or maybe sometimes already global in terms of their experience and the program is designed you know to amplify that global experience by giving the exposure to the European market, by being in France but also the American market and here in Singapore I guess it's that's the perfect place and platform to learn more about Asia and the specificities of doing business in this region. I mean Singapore is probably one of the most innovative cities in in Asia and super well connected

Alexis De Pampelonne
4th year student, GLobal Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

NTU’s campus from what I've seen in France and living in Singapore before, it's really one of its kind so it's at the same time vast but as well full. I mean honestly there's like multiple libraries, there's two food halls, there's shops, banks and even two giant screens that are forecasting sports and on some nights films. So it's a very lively campus and that has pretty much everything to offer. 

Reena Liljestam
4th year student, GLobal Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

There are two major sports facilities on campus: one is more for the athletes and there's another one that's available for all students. There's a swimming pool, a football field and I think there's a running field as well so you have the
opportunity to go there to exercise in your free time. As you can see behind me there are pretty vast spaces where a lot of students study, so sometimes I like studying outdoors. Also there's the hive where there are pretty big areas where we can sit in groups for group projects and I find that pretty much anywhere you can study on campus which is pretty nice. 

Alexis De Pampelonne

In NTU there's a lot of students from Asia which is very
interesting because if you know Singapore is just a hub there's people
from across the world so it's sure that here are going to meet a lot of people and much more people from Asia and from the few people's I've interacted with so far it's very interesting to see how you can again see a new culture and this one is very different from what we see in Europe or in United States; and it is very asian in this way which is interesting. 

Joanna Adriano
4th year student, GLobal Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

Here we still have good projects but we have to work more during classes which is a bit more intensive when it comes to their learning experience but
we're learning differently in different places so it's great. I am taking three
classes and a seminar. So the first class is “investment analysis and portfolio management” and my professor is Charlie Charoenwong and he's teaching us a lot
about Excel and he also shows us a lot of theories and then apply it on Excel; so we have lectures and also tutorials on how to do a on Excel, and with him we had two projects: so first one was about the cost of capital and now we're more focusing on investments on the second project, and finals are coming soon.

Charlie Charoenwong, PhD
Associate Professor of Finance
Director of MSc in Financial Engineering
Nanyang Business School

My name is Charlie Charoenwong, I have a first degree in mechanical engineering, before I went to the States to get my MBA and a PhD in finance. In “investment analysis” the course is a basic investment to project evaluation, to company evaluation. That involves the careful estimation of the cost of capitals
estimation together with the risk assessment for the project. They are planning the forecast on investment in the financial asset, we forecast on equity
so, how the manager investment fund, how you find the portfolios, how to make an allocation, how to achieve the risk and performance trade-off, together with some financial derivatives that we can enhance in investment.

Joanna Adriano

My second class is “International Finance” with Dr. Siriwan. We learn a lot about international finance and also the world, how we manage for example to do capital budgeting within companies. It's very interesting because we have this project about a  crisis and we have to analyse it but also we learn a lot about theories on finance and how it works in real life; so it's very theoretical but we also have a lot of applications and exercises to apply those.

Siriwan Chutikamoltham, PHD
Senior Lecturer of International Finance,
Academic Director (MBA)
Nanyang Business School

My name is Dr. Siriwan Chutikamoltham. should he come on time teaching after I received my doctorate from the Harvard Business School. For the EDHEC
program I teach international finance. It is about managing the finances of multinational companies. So this course we talk about what managers of a multinational that has business with many many countries would have to worry about. And a lot of it is about managing risks. 

Arvinth Jayaprakash
4th year student, Global Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

Digital marketing is the class that I absolutely love. It's the elective that I chose, we have a professor called Vijay Sethi. He was recognized as one of the best professors in his field a few years ago. His method is very very particular, I've never had that kind of professor and it's very good. We do have business cases as normal marketing classes but he is able to combine both his critical point of view as well as the resources that we have to learn from the cases. So it's very useful especially as an international student because we are able to study big agencies abroad about how they interact with the different shareholders, how they are able to maximise the profit and how they grow their business in general so it's very very interesting.

Vijay Sethi, PhD
Professor of Digital Marketing
Awarded “World’s best professor” by the Economist (2013)
Nanyang Business School

My name is Professor Vijay Sethi. I'm a professor in the Nanyang Business School in the Department of IT and operations management. My background and experience is a PhD in information systems which I got from the US, then we moved here to Singapore and I've been here almost for about 25 years. Before that, I started off as an undergraduate in chemical engineering and then an MBA from the United States. The biggest award that I got was being named the business professor of the Year, this was by the EIU in London, this was a few years ago. The class that I teach is digital marketing and I teach two things: one is the digital part, how does the digital world evolve and what technology is all about. My teaching style is all discussion-oriented. I teach only through case studies mainly, and every time we have discussions in the class on cases. Also, the students have to go out and research industries and they do presentations in the class and they've been absolutely wonderful in that particular part. 

Arvinth Jayaprakash

At the end we have cultural intelligence, it's a super fun class that is the only class that we have with local students here in Singapore, we're in class with everyone. It's very interesting in terms of teaching method as well because we always have an activity, a fun activity to do. We interact a lot with the professor, we're able to participate a lot, we do have a specific Facebook group, so we could post every week about different cultural things that we have learned from Singapore, or different things that we could brought for the class such as like what we have learned like in France or in the US. It is very enriching and I think the students are the one who bring the most in the classes and the teacher just guides us and it's very very nice.

So the bachelor thesis is a one-year project. It's the end of our curriculum project. We do have to work with a company about the marketing strategy of it, so we have to prospect different companies in order to see if they have a specific topic in mind in order for us to actually help them with a student view and the perception that we have as recent graduates or current students. 

The mentors, at the very beginning we had a few of them, so we were actually able to choose which mentor we wanted to. So we have different profiles, different backgrounds and according to the project we have to choose them. 

Joanna Adriano

My mentor is Julian Kala and he helps us every week. So usually we have meetings every week on Wednesday to report to him the progress of our research and we meet up with the company as well. His role as a mentor is really to help us focus on how to do the analysis for example give a suggestion and also be our contact when it comes to knowing what to do and also how to write the report for example and how to approach the company. It's very interesting and very helpful to have a veteran like him.

Vijay Sethi, PhD

You can be studying global material sitting in any country but it doesn't give you a perspective of what the world is all about.

Siriwan Chutikamoltham, PHD

Having opportunities to travel means a lot and do take these opportunities whenever one can.

Vijay Sethi, PhD

It puts them a step ahead of many many others who might not have had the same kind of a global platform which I think your schools provide through learning here and studying here in NTU and also the other travel that they do.

Siriwan Chutikamoltham, PHD

Utilising the opportunity, I think that would be a very very beneficial particularly for young young students to have a head start in understanding the world around them at such a young age.

Hugo Di Fazio
4th year student, Global Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

The Asian culture is a lot more different from what we experienced in the US and in France

Nanthida Kaewradee
4th year student, Global Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

It's a very clean City. It's one of the cleanest cities I have been to. People are very nice. They are pretty slow walkers which is kind of frustrating but when you come to Singapore the heat is so hot here that you understand why they walk pretty slowly. 

Hugo Di Fazio

The climate is obviously a little bit humid but then you find that sort of harmony between that green part, that green that is also integrated in the different skyscrapers that you can find everywhere in the city and the most impressive one around downtown and then all the traditional part that comes to the Asian culture.

Nanthida Kaewradee

It's very modern, there's a lot of buildings, you have this central city downtown of Singapore but you also have this countryside aspect with forest and a lot of greenery which was very surprising because Singapore is a city, it's a hub and it's also nice to have this calm aspect.

Hugo Di Fazio

Singapore is a very Green City. We had a lot of parks everywhere and this is actually astonishing. You have water absolutely everywhere, the place where you first go is the Marina Bay Sands which is this enormous hotel that is very emblematic in Singapore. What is very good in Singapore is that you have a lot of rooftops, rooftop bars which is actually enjoyable if you want to meet friends there and drink a cocktail or something like that.

Nanthida Kaewradee

There's also gardens by the bay, it looks like you were from the movie Avatar. You have a botanic garden, the Chinese garden with the greenery side of Singapore.

Hugo Di Fazio

Then you have different emblematic places such as Orchard Road which is like the Champs Elysées of Singapore. There are basically a lot of food courts, traditional food courts where the food is made by hand, and it's very traditional.So this is really a big contrast between this legacy of th eAsian culture and the booming growth of all these Asian countries such as Singapore.

Charlotte Vincent
4th year student, Global Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

I found my apartment through rentinsingapore.com.sg which is a link given by NTU to a deck. So I was contacted by my now landlord and roommates and I found my apartment it's ten minutes away from campus which is really practical because it's really near everything including the MRT, the metro network of Singapore, all the buses. I have the bus that takes me straight to campus. Life in Singapore is slightly expensive, it depends on where you are, but because all the neighbourhoods are around NTU, including Pioneer, Boon Lay, Jurong West, it's a lot of very friendly-family neighbourhoods because you have a lot of primary and secondary schools. There are a lot of families with rather young kids so it's really friendly, it's really safe, all the condo have a private security so nobody can enter the condo without being allowed to. You have to present your card and things like this so it's really safe. You can walk around even at night. Singapore in general is really safe. At night, as a woman, it feels great to be able to walk around Singapore in the middle of the night around 1:00 to 3:00 a.m. and nobody is gonna come up to you and ask weird questions you know. Because it's really close to the University and they know that a lot of students and families live here they're really careful about everything security related.

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Laure Amouyal
4th year student, Global Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

After a recruitment process, I'm now part of the peer helping program. So it's a program run by the well-being centre of NTU, and basically it helps give students resources for their mental health. We create events, there is also a cosy hub here on campus where people can relax, there is massage chair, there are books also related to mental health and like advice on how to feel better when you're stressed during exams. It's actually very fulfilling to be able to help students that need a resource like that, we can give them the number of a counsellor or just give them advice or just talk to them. I will be with 25 Singaporean students and local students and I hope I will create friendships during this time and I think it's going to be a good experience for me on campus.

Philippine Robert
4th year student, Global Business Track
EDHEC International BBA

It's really exciting. Keeping the excitement even when moving to the second, third, fourth country, it's always a new experience. You're gonna meet so many incredible people. Avoid staying with only the French people from your class, and go see the world, meet people, talk to everyone in the street. It's only French people that don't want to talk to anyone, but in other countries people are so excited to hear about politics, science whatever you can talk about. By meeting new people, joining clubs, associations… It's really one of the best ways to learn about the country you stay in. So that would be the main piece of advice I would give. I joined the NTU tennis team, I was in the UCLA Tennis Club when I was in Los Angeles, and it was I think what allowed me to have such an amazing American life campus experience: joining a club, being involved in a team with really really strong team spirit, lots of travel all around the U.S. which was amazing so I decided to do the same here. I joined the NTU tennis team and people are amazing, I mean we hang out a lot, we gather outside of practice and I was able to meet so many people that I would probably never have met outside of this environment. I have been playing tennis for a long time so I knew I’d love this activity, but being able to meet new people thanks to that was great. 

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