On the afternoon of 6th May, 2025, the Professional Direction Demonstration Meeting of the "Business Administration + Applied Statistics" Dual-Degree Experimental Class, hosted by the School of Business Administration (SBA) of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL), was successfully held in North Room 703, Wenhan Building. The meeting adopted a hybrid online and offline format, inviting experts from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan University (WHU), Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE), and Xiamen University (XMU), as well as representatives of faculty from within the school. Discussions focused on cultivating interdisciplinary talent and advancing cross-disciplinary integration in the digital and intelligent era.
At the beginning of the meeting, Professor Wu Haitao, Dean of the SBA and Director of the MBA Education Center, emphasized that the ongoing industrial transformation calls urgently for talents with both management decision-making capabilities and data analysis skills. The experimental class is an important initiative to realize interdisciplinary integration in education.
During the special report session, Professor Hu Chuan, Vice Dean of the SBA, introduced the reform approach and direction, emphasizing the need to promote curriculum innovation based on real-world demand. Professor Zhang Xuan from the School of Statistics and Mathematics pointed out that management and statistics are mutually reinforcing, and together can form an integrated mechanism for cultivating interdisciplinary talent. Professor Mao Jianghua, Director of the Department of Business Administration, provided a detailed report on the construction goals and preparation progress of the dual-degree experimental class.
Several external experts offered constructive suggestions, including introducing cutting-edge technology courses such as big data and AIGC, optimizing the full pathway from "curriculum-practice-employment", and strengthening "hard-core" competencies such as quantitative analysis to avoid superficial integration.
In the end, all experts unanimously approved the plan and reached a consensus on three key points: building a three-dimensional curriculum system, establishing a collaborative innovation platform between universities and enterprises, and forming an interdisciplinary mentorship team. Professor Wu Haitao stated that the SBA will fully incorporate the feedback, continue to refine the dual-degree program, and strive to build a national model for interdisciplinary business education.