The Chronicle

Issue date: 9/16/08 Section: News
Last update: 9/16/08 at 6:36 AM EST

Media Credit: Michael Naclerio Dancers entertain a crowd at the Fox Center.

Richard Brodhead

Blair Sheppard

Media Credit: Michael Naclerio President Richard Brodhead spoke about the importance of international outreach for business education at Fuqua Monday.

The Fuqua School of Business will vastly expand its reach with the opening of five fledgling campuses abroad to supplement its Durham hub: a six-armed approach to corporate education.

Fuqua Dean Blair Sheppard announced Monday that the school is developing outposts in St. Petersburg, London, Shanghai, Dubai and New Delhi. The sites will eventually house all of Duke's MBA curricula, but they will initially support the Cross-Continent MBA program beginning in August 2009, as The Chronicle revealed this past July. Students enrolled in the two-year degree program will spend one to two weeks at each of the five international sites and conclude their coursework with a four-week stretch in Durham. Tuition for the program will cost $101,900, according to Fuqua's Web site.

Three women clad only in metallic gold bikinis and paint a shade of Duke blue captivated the business-casual crowd when they took center stage at The Lafe P. and Rita D. Fox Center Monday for the announcement of the global outposts.

"We just saw a representation of the goddess Kali, the goddess of time and change," said President Richard Brodhead, quickly explaining the reference to the six-armed diety. "We thought that might be an appropriate symbol to start with today because today we're raising the curtain on a new business and indeed a new way to train and inspire the leaders of tomorrow."

Elizabeth Hogan, Fuqua's assistant dean for marketing and communications, said the sites have been in the works for about a year, and discussions with partners began several months ago. Fuqua will collaborate with the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg State University, and partners for the remaining four sites will be publicized in the coming months.

Monday's ceremony was equal parts press conference and hoopla, with sound bites from industry leaders interspersed with cultural performances. A pair of Chinese acrobats in full-body spandex folded themselves into steel cylinders, followed by a speech on the importance of cultural fluency by General Motors Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagoner, Trinity '75 and vice-chair of the Board of Trustees.

"What we're doing, launching five campuses at once, is a bit crazy," Hogan said. "We wanted to communicate the scope of that in a way that people would understand. Every region is very different, and we did this contrast between a cultural presentation and a business presentation."

This is not the first time Fuqua has tried its hand at globalization. In 1999, Fuqua announced the formation of the Fuqua School of Business Europe in Frankfurt, Germany, initially earmarked as the base for then-new Cross-Continent MBA program. Fuqua scaled back the effort three years later, citing diminishing interest from European students.

"Three lessons from Frankurt: pick the right location, bring enough resources to bear and only go with quality and have a truly compelling offering," Sheppard wrote in an e-mail. "This is an entirely different proposition and entails building and committing to build the first truly global business school."

Nor is Duke alone in its global aspirations. A host of other elite American institutions-including Yale University, the University of Connecticut and New York University-have eyed a more global landscape and encountered special challenges.

Fuqua administrators said they hope that the interdisciplinary curricula of the planned sites-drawing from the resources of the School of Medicine, the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and the School of Law-will help Duke dodge the problems that have dogged its peer institutions and its own past venture.

"Depending on the need of the area, there will be a different mix of schools that are involved," Hogan said. "In general, those sites will all be multi-disciplinary. We're launching [all five sites] simultaneously, but one of the lessons we've learned is that it's better to go slowly and do it with quality."

In addition, Fuqua administrators said they are confident that a commitment to cultural immersion will enable them to succeed where other universities have failed.

"We have this concept of deeply embedded relationships," Hogan said. "What we'll be doing in these regions is... having a deeper kind of presence-[other universities] typically have more casual affiliations. It's a way to connect deeply and be in a region, not just sit on top of that region."

Beatles cover band "The BackBeat" closed the show, performing a medley that included the tune "Nowhere Man"-ironic, because soon enough, the Fuqua name will have sprouted up just about everywhere.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools