Winthrop finalist Shao focused on getting students ready to work
Alan Shao, one of three finalists hoping to be Winthrop University’s next president, is a big-picture thinker who places a priority on getting students workforce-ready in a global economy.
“I try to create great students,” he said. “GREAT” is an acronym for a five-point strategy to graduate students who will quickly and successfully find jobs. He included the plan in his letter of application for the Winthrop job.
The “G” means students gaining a “global mindset.”
For Shao – who is currently dean of the College of Charleston’s school of business – running a university with a global focus is crucial. The area is also personal – his dad is from China and his mother is from South Carolina – and global travel has been a large part of his professional life. He has logged more than 100 trips to Asia for business and to visit colleges offering student and faculty exchange programs.
When he spoke to The Herald just after Winthrop officials named him a presidential finalist late last month, Shao had just returned from a business trip to Barcelona, Spain. Before that, he was in San Diego, meeting with like-minded university administrators who are members of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, an international organization.
While business and marketing consulting are his interests, Shao says higher education is his passion. That’s why the “R” in great stands for “ready to work” – meaning Shao wants all college students to have applicable job skills as well as a degree. Being employable, he said, is important for students of any academic discipline.
The “E” stands for “entrepreneurial mindset,” the “A” for “ability to analyze situations” and the “T” for being “technologically savvy” – all traits that Shao argues university students need to find work after school.
If he becomes Winthrop’s next president, Shao said, he would work to ramp up Winthrop programs and services to make students “GREAT” by visiting every academic college within the university and helping leaders start advisory boards comprised of community business leaders. That move would put professors and students closer to potential employers, he said, and help Winthrop design “market-driven” academic programs.
At the College of Charleston, Shao said, he reinvigorated the school of business’ 32-member advisory board when he started as dean in 2009. Board members were frustrated, he said, and wanted to be more engaged with the school – not just by donating money and occasionally hearing updates from leadership.
Over five years, Shao retained all the board members and grew the group to 50 members, including former state House Speaker Bobby Harrell, dozens of CEOs and corporate executives, and James Newsome III, president of the South Carolina State Ports Authority.
At the school of business, since 2009, Shao has overseen 28 percent growth in the undergraduate student population, and the graduate school’s enrollment has more than doubled. He helped establish master’s business programs and new majors in “high-demand areas,” such as marketing, finance and hospitality revenue management. Another new major – supply chain management studies – will start later this year.
The focus of schools like the College of Charleston and Winthrop, Shao said, is to continue to support South Carolina’s workforce needs. To do so, Winthrop’s next president has to be a close community partner, he said, not a “bystander.”
His current experience as a business school dean is great preparation for a presidency, he said. He’s competing for the Winthrop job with two other academic deans: Dan Mahony of Kent State University and Jeff Elwell of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Mahony has said he’s a finalist for top administrator positions at two other schools. Elwell says Winthrop is the only presidency he’s currently considering.
Shao told The Herald he preferred not to discuss whether he’s a finalist elsewhere.
But he has told school trustees, “Winthrop University and me are meant to be.” He cites his experience in strategic planning, supporting a university’s central education mission, and fundraising.
Bringing in more private financial support for the business school is one area Shao is particularly proud of. Since starting as dean, he said, new gifts have more than doubled, and he has raised millions to support student scholarships and eventual construction of a new business school building.
“I love asking for money,” he said, adding that he enjoys helping philanthropists find ways to donate to help students by matching their own passions to student achievements.
Shao has his sights set on Charlotte – a city just 30 minutes up Interstate 77 that he said Winthrop needs to be more visible in. Students can find internships and employment opportunities there, he said, and the university can find financial support. Winthrop also should have a stronger presence in Atlanta, too, he said.
Shao is already comfortable in the Charlotte area, having spent nearly 20 years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, as a marketing professor and associate dean for the school’s graduate programs. His two adult daughters live in Charlotte. His 19-year-old son attends the College of Charleston.
While in Charlotte, Shao helped start new “revenue-generating” and self-sustaining international study programs in Taiwan, Mexico and Hong Kong for UNCC students. Similar programs, he said, are possible at Winthrop, where exchange programs for students and faculty exist but could be strengthened and turned more profitable.
Locally, he said, “Winthrop is surrounded by the markets that I think are critical to its continued success.”
The university’s “trajectory is straight up,” he said, adding that it just needs “to have the right person going in that direction ... I would have never applied for this job if I didn’t think I could be very successful in helping Winthrop University.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2015 at 8:44 PM with the headline "Winthrop finalist Shao focused on getting students ready to work."