September 9, 2016
The first year of the Executive International MBA exchange program, presented jointly by the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business and Chonnam National University in South Korea, concluded Friday, Aug. 26 in Columbia. After taking most of their courses at Chonnam National University, the 30 students in the program — all leaders from the Korea Electric Power Corporation — came to Columbia for three weeks to take the final two courses.
The Korea Electric Power Corporation, or KEPCO, selected a cohort of 30 of its employees to participate in the one-year program to develop more international managers. By 2030, KEPCO hopes to increase their international operation to 20 percent from where it currently stands at 4 percent.
Following the entrance ceremony in late August of last year, the cohort began the fall section of the program with three courses from Chonnam National University and one from the Moore School, for which a Moore School professor visited South Korea to teach in November. In the spring, they took four more courses from Chonnam National University before three Moore School professors visited to teach classes in May. Their final courses, Global Operations Management and International Negotiation, were completed at the Moore School last month.
During their time in Columbia, South Carolina, the cohort visited places such as SCANA Corporation in Cayce, South Carolina, Duke Energy in Charlotte and Boeing in North Charleston, South Carolina, to get a better feel for how American energy corporations function compared to KEPCO, which is ranked No. 97 on the Forbes Global 2000 list and No. 1 in electric utility for 2016.
Sung-Hee Park, faculty director of the Executive International MBA program at the Moore School, anticipates expanding the program in the future.
“The first cohort has been very successful,” he said. “Based on the success of this program, I think we can be a key player in the side of business education that focuses on the energy industry."
The second cohort began the program at the end of August.
By Madeleine Vath