Ning Sung, Mike Wang
Special to the Tsinghua News Center
The Tsinghua team of the STEP( the Stanford -Tsinghua Exchange Program ),consisting of 20 2nd year MBA students, visited Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) from January 27 to February 4, with one week full schedule of business, social and academic activities.
During their visit to the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, California, Tsinghua students were able to immerse themselves in the whole Stanford GSB experience. They mingled amongst GSB students in their regular classes and at their school social events.
During their stay, the Tsinghua team visited world-class companies such as Google, Yahoo, Ideo Design, Accel VC, Williams Sonoma, Levi Strauss, and Facebook, and enjoyed interesting speeches and Q&A sessions with their management teams. Tsinghua team also toured Stanford campuses, and the beautiful San Francisco city in day and night, trekked around Alcatraz Prison(where the movie ROCK was shot) learning about its colorful history while admiring the city view, and wine-tasted their way around Napa Valley---the home of Champaign in the US.
Students said the one week they spent in Stanford had been very enjoyable and impressive.
"I used to hold a misunderstanding that Chinese and non-Chinese people think very differently. However, I was quite surprised to find so many ideas, values, and approaches in common between our two programs, " said Bill Shen, member of the Tsinghua team, when asked about what was the most surprising about their Stanford tour.
Meanwhile, Tsinghua students were also looking forward to the Stanford students' trip to Beijing in March, as part of the STEP. Students from the Tsinghua team said they were excited about bringing American students "the experiences of both traditional China and modern China." They planed to show the visiting Stanford team "the real life" in Beijing.
The exchange involves a one-week visit by the Tsinghua MBA students to the Stanford GSB during January, and a reciprocal visit by GSB students to Tsinghua in Beijing at the end of March. Visits are organized along three core aspects -- academics, business, and social activities-- with the goal of providing cross-cultural learning opportunities.
