By Wang Yuan
Special to the Tsinghua News Center
Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management (SEM) announced the appointment on August 18 of former Senior Associate Dean of the Harvard Business School Professor F. Warren McFarlan as Co-Director of SEM's China Business Case Center for the next three years.
During his tenure, Professor McFarlan will design a Harvard Business School case study based teaching platform for SEM adapted to the current business environment in China. Professor McFarlan will also select a company as the basis for case study and research on the problems the company encounters in its growth process. He may also open further case development and teaching seminars in the future.
"Tsinghua SEM attaches great importance to case development and case-based teaching. It plays an importance role in management education. This move will raise SEM's case-development and teaching capability to the international level and exert a positive influence on Chinese management education," said of Tsinghua's SEM Dean Qian Yingyi.
"I am particularly pleased," said McFarlan, "because of the extraordinary colleagues that I will be working with here over the next three years. We have already been working together for nearly ten years. Professor McFarlan also said he will bring additional Harvard case-development experience to Tsinghua’s case study effort.
SEM's Dean Qian Yingyi, Associate Dean Yang Bin, and Associate Dean Xia Donglin, who is also Director of SEM's China Business Case Center, as well as the Director of Tsinghua's SEM EDP Center Xue Lei and Director of the School's Office for Communication Zheng Yuhuang attended the ceremony at which Professor McFarlan's appointment was announced.
Professor McFarlan earned his AB from Harvard University in 1959, and his MBA and DBA from the Harvard Business School in 1961 and 1965 respectively. He has played a significant role in introducing materials on Management Information Systems to all major programs at the Harvard Business School since the first course on the subject was offered in 1962. He has been a long-time teacher in the Advanced Management Program, the International Senior Managers Program, the Delivering Information Services Program, and several of the Social Sector programs. He currently teaches the MBA first year Financial Reporting and Control course and the second year Doing Business in China in the Early 21st Century course. He also teaches in several Executive Education programs.
