On December 13^th, 2022, the Association of MBAs (AMBA) and Business Graduates Association (BGA) wrote to the School of Management, Lanzhou University (LUSM) to officially renew the AMBA accreditation of the School’s MBA portfolio and award BGA accreditation initially for a combined term of five years. The result, is the re-accreditation award for LZU’s MBA program after the initial accreditation and re-accreditation in 2014 and 2017, and the School’s initial BGA accreditation, making LUSM the first institution of higher education jointly accredited by both AMBA and BGA in Northwest China.

Official decision letter

From September 5^th to 6^th, the panel members, led by Prof. Gulnare Kurenkeyva, rector of Almaty Management University in Kazakhstan, consisting of Prof. Wang Zhongming, China Advisor of AMBA&BGA, Prof. Jeffery Petty, EMBA Academic Director of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and Mr. Joseph Pilkington, Senior Accreditation Manager of AMBA&BGA, made an online visit and conducted a two-day accreditation for the MBA program portfolio and its whole quality at LUSM. Pan Baotian, Vice President of Lanzhou University, Zhang Haoli, Executive Dean of Graduate School, Guo Mingzhou, Director of Academic Affairs Office, Chi Gang, Director of International Cooperation and Exchange Office, the School’s leadership team, directors of programs, heads of teaching departments, representatives of its faculty and staff attended the assessment sessions respectively.

Online Panel Assessment

During the assessment, Pan Baotian met with the panel and delivered a speech. Pan pointed out that the university attaches great importance to AMBA and BGA accreditation, and expressed gratitude to the AMBA and BGA organizations for their contributions to promoting the quality improvement of global business education and international cooperation. As a pioneer of business education in western China, LZU has always been concerned about and supported the development of management discipline and the improvement of education quality. With decades of hard work, LUSM has formed a complete portfolio and developed a unique feature of outstanding comprehensiveness, multi-program interaction, east-west exchanges, and active integration of business and public administration. These programs have also played a significant, supporting, and leading role in promoting the university’s discipline development, education quality improvement, international cooperation and exchanges, government-university-business coordination, and local sustainable development. During the discussion, the panel members and Pan Baotian had in-depth discussions on the aspects of talent cultivation, teaching system construction, the strategy of internationalization, and sustainable development.

Pan Baotian delivers speech

During the assessment, Dean He Wensheng, on behalf of LUSM, reviewed its accreditation process and progress in the past five years, reported the continuous improvement of the college in discipline construction, faculty, talent cultivation, and social services since AMBA reaccreditation in 2017, and highlighted the strategic planning, development ideas and the next action plan of the School in its professional degree development and curriculum innovation. After listening to the strategic report, the panel discussed the development of the School with the leaders and asked targeted questions on the School’s competitiveness, development of educational resources, and innovation of scientific research organization in the light of LUSM’s Self-Assessment Report (SAR) and its 14th Five-Year Plan. Dean He responded that AMBA & BGA joint accreditation is an important channel to test the development achievements of the School for years, and the School will, according to the evaluation comments and suggestions, benchmark with the advanced business and management schools at home and abroad, and devote to the practice of the new development concept and the embedded development of responsible management education.

He Wensheng delivers report

During the inquiry sessions, the panel conducted a detailed inquiry and in-depth discussion on the construction of the programs of human resource management and MBA from the perspective of program features, faculty-student interaction, curriculum design, teaching evaluation, and training plan revision. At the same time, the panel provides practical ideas and reference suggestions for fields involving "responsibility management", "faculty growth", "female leadership", "alumni development and lifelong learning" and so on. In addition, according to the SARs, through online Baseroom, the panel rigorously reviewed the School’s supporting data and materials, including course syllabi, teaching materials, research publications, meeting minutes, and documents related to the program development over the past three years. Moreover, the panel collected the judgments and opinions of stakeholders from the School’s faculty, alumni, employers, and student representatives through questionnaires.

Representatives of LUSM (partial)

After the full-scale, detailed, and in-depth inquiry and assessment, the panel highly praised the progress and contributions made by LUSM in the fields of scientific research, talent cultivation, and social services, fully affirmed the leading advantages of the School as a think tank in the western region and its achievements in actively undertaking social responsibilities, and also put forward constructive suggestions for the future development and improvement of the School.

Onsite discussion

Since initiating the accreditation journey in 2013, LUSM, based on its strategy of “internationalization”, has always adhered to the concept of “to promote the development by the accreditation”, taking accreditation as a grasp, and focusing on promoting the internal development and continuous improvement of the international characteristics of the School. The success of AMBA & BGA joint accreditation is due to the attention and support of the university and school leaders and all departments, as well as the efforts and cooperation of all the stakeholders at both the university and school level, marks the education quality, development prospect and strategic planning of the LUSM have once again been internationally recognized, which is of great significance in promoting the further improvement of the teaching system of the university and the construction of a high-level management school with distinctive international characteristics.

Group photo of all leaders

In the next stage, upholding the motto “the learning of management is the learning of heading for success”, the mission “to develop leaders with global perspective, local commitment, and social responsibility”, and the vision “to become a leading management school of distinctiveness, inclusiveness, and openness”, the School will continue to benchmark with advanced institutions for accumulate experience and devote itself to knowledge delivery, talent cultivation and wisdom innovation in the management field, so as to contribute to the construction of LZU’s “double first-class” construction and the sustainable and high-quality development of responsible management education.

【Background Information】

AMBA&BGA is the international impartial authority on standards of business education internationally, for the benefit of Business Schools, MBA students and graduates and alumni, employers, communities and society. In 2018, AMBA launched its BGA accreditation as an international membership and quality assurance body of world-leading and high-potential Business Schools that share a commitment to responsible management practices and lifelong learning, and are looking to provide positive impact on their students, communities, and the economy as a whole. Both AMBA and BGA accreditation are phased and dynamic accreditations, with a typical validity for 3 to 5 years once, and aim to encourage business and management schools enhance and assure their education quality with the principle of continuous improvement.