Sanda Cohort III students eat lunch at Daly's during orientation.

Preparing business students to thrive in a global economy is the key reason for Rider’s evolving partnership with Sanda University. A week ago, 22 new Sanda students and four teachers from Shanghai made Rider “home” for the next two years.

The arrival of Sanda’s third cohort brings the total number of Rider’s Sanda students to 74. Fifty-one are currently on campus.

Members of the first cohort, who arrived in January 2005, took part in a program that enabled them to earn dual undergraduate degrees from Sanda and Rider. Most continued their studies culminating in a graduate degree in business from Rider. As part of their graduate program, students were successfully placed in internship opportunities at leading companies, including AIG, Bear Stearns, Johnson & Johnson and Tyco Electronics.

Rider continues to extend its global perspective for students and the campus community in many ways. Last fall semester, the University added elementary Mandarin Chinese (Chinese 100) to the foreign languages and literatures department. Chinese 101 will be offered this spring. In the fall of 2007, an intermediate course, Chinese 200, will be offered, and Chinese 201 in spring 2008. The curriculum focuses on speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. Dr. Linda Materna, chairperson of foreign languages and literatures, initiated Rider’s Chinese language program. As part of the further expansion of opportunities, six Rider students traveled to China last summer to tutor high school-aged youth in English and teach them about American culture.

Several Rider staff and faculty members have made the trip to Shanghai. Dr. Phyllis Frakt, special assistant to the president and vice president emerita, and Dr. Minmin Wang, professor of communication, were the catalysts for the partnership. President Mordechai Rozanski; James O’Hara, vice president for enrollment management; Dr. Larry Newman, dean of the College of Business Administration (CBA); Dr. Feng-Ying Liu, professor of finance; and Dr. James Castagnera, associate provost, have worked to build the framework and further solidify the evolving relationship.

Since the initiation of the partnership, 10 business faculty have taught courses in Shanghai. They are: Dr. Linguo Gong, associate professor of management sciences; Dr. Cynthia Newman, assistant professor of marketing; Dr. Tom Kelly, former associate dean of CBA; Dr. Christine Lentz, associate professor of management and human resources; Dr. Lauren Eder, chairperson of the department of computer information systems; Dr. Zaher Zantout, associate professor of finance; Dr. Ralph Gallay, associate professor of marketing; Dr. Joe Kim, associate professor of marketing; Doug Pressman, adjunct professor of finance, and Dean Newman.

The official greeting and orientation of new Sanda students has now become a Rider tradition. This month, President Rozanski welcomed students in the third cohort at a reception in his home. Welcome activities for the week, sponsored by the Office of International Programs, included lunch and a tour of Daly’s, and an orientation presented by mentors from Cohort II, business students, and graduate students in Rider’s counseling program.

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