An ocean away, but Gabelli School all the same

Graduate | Nov 01, 2016 | Gabelli School of Business

They number 29, and 10 of them can be addressed as chairman.

They work in construction, futures, industrial food production, and gas equipment—to name just a few of more than a dozen fields.

They are all Gabelli School of Business students.

Who are they?

They are the second Beijing-based class of the Doctor of Professional Studies in Business program, who recently embarked on three to four years of doctoral-level coursework, scholarly inquiry, and dissertation-writing.

These students were admitted to the program because of their high levels of achievement in their respective business fields. The DPS—offered in partnership with the prestigious Peking University, with which the Gabelli School has a long friendship—gives them the research skills to look at their own industries and other business sectors with an academic lens.

For all but two months of the year, these students’ academic lives keep them in China, which is where their executive jobs are. Then, each summer, they come to New York City for classes taught in their native Mandarin at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

But they are Gabelli School students year-round, just the same.

To show their Fordham spirit, the incoming DPS class sang the University’s traditional “alma mater” at the opening ceremony for the fall, impressing Dean Donna Rapaccioli and other Gabelli School faculty and administrators who had traveled to Beijing for the occasion.

You can check out their performance here—and look for them at 140 West 62nd Street come July.