In 2007, VNU University of Economics and Business (VNU-UEB) was established on the basis of the Faculty of Economics under Vietnam National University, whose predecessor is Faculty of Political Economy under University of Hanoi. The establishment of VNU-UEB marked a new development with the aim of becoming the leading research university in the country, training high-quality human resources in the fields of economics, management and business administration.
Scientific research is one of the key tasks
To achieve the goal of becoming a research university, besides the emphasis on quality of training; scientific research is also the pivotal activity in developing and affirming the brand of VNU-UEB. In the development strategy to 2020 and vision to 2030, along with the goal of training high-quality human resources (equivalent to the quality of human resources trained in some advanced universities in Southeast Asia); VNU-UEB set the aim of developing high quality science research products, which will be the foundation for improving the quality of teaching and policy advising in order to contribute to the development of Vietnam’s socio-economy.
In annual mission plans, two key tasks are always training and scientific research. Lecturers not only do teaching but also conduct some projects, research project under the direction of science and technology of university with specific targets. In recent years, VNU-UEB has chaired and co-organized a lot of national and international conferences with various specialized theme that attract a lot of researchers and policy planning agencies. It is an opportunity for lecturers to exchange and communicate with domestic and foreign researchers, update with the knowledge and new concepts to gradually improve their own research capacity.
The university also has appropriate mechanisms to reward staff, faculty who participate in research and have qualified scientific outputs.
In addition to the extensive deployment of scientific research activities among faculty, researchers and managers, it is also strongly launched among students, creating exciting movements. At the beginning of each school year, the five faculties will hold scientific research orientation for students to inspire their love, passion and give them suitable guidance for their research. Students participate in the annual school-level and faculty-level scientific research seminars with high spirit and quality. Our students also often take part in the forums, international exchange programs including GPAC, CUC Summer School, International Student Forum, and interact with major universities..., which have helped expand their knowledge, enhance communication skills in English and become more confident in the future.
"Beside facilitating and encouraging research, the University always takes initiatives in inviting prestigious scientists and experts from Vietnam and other countries to make a speech, which provide an opportunity for faculty, students to grasp new ideology and research issues in different perspectives. That is how we have been implementing to arouse passion for scientific research in each faculty"- Assoc.Prof.Dr. Nguyen Hong Son – Rector of VNU-UEB shared.
Research to promote training
At VNU-UEB, activities and products of scientific research not only serve for economic development and business development policy consultancy, but also have important contribution in supporting the training. Mentioning the goal of improving the quality of training through scientific research in VNU-UEB, Assoc.Prof.Dr. Nguyen Hong Son- Rector, said: "The goal of the VNU University of Economics and Business in 2020 is to become a research-oriented university with the basic characteristics of teaching is based on research and teaching activities is also the research activities. In fact, the determination to develop a research-oriented university model is not the goal of many universities”. He affirmed that one of the important tasks of scientific research at VNU-UEB is to improve the quality of training, or in other words "study leads training."
At the resource level, scientific research is one way for the school to be able to use the study results to build databases, textbooks, reference and learning materials for the training programs.... At VNU-UEB, through the system of research subjects that faculty members participate each year, the University will have specific requirements for outputs. For example, for the research projects at the university level, the priority objectives set out for lecturers are practical situations, a particular aspect of reasoning ... which can serve for the lecture course of the faculty. This will help the teachers to update knowledge for their teaching.
Furthermore, the University links involvement of students, trainees, graduate students in the projects, research programs as one of the outputs and is compulsory required for research projects of faculty. This will help improve the school's educational philosophy "learner-centered", "self-learning and research" and "lifelong learning" and thereby strengthening the autonomy of students, trainees and graduate students.
With the goal of training high-quality human resources to meet social requirement, training programs should also have updated with research and development in the world. From this perspective, VNU-UEB has been successfully in developing research projects on CDIO model (Conceive - Design - Implement - Operate)- an international model and applied it in innovative construction and organization of training programs from undergraduate to doctorate for both existing and new program. This is a solution to improve the quality of training to meet the social requirements on the basis of defining outcome standards to determine training plan and program content design. This process is built in a scientific, rational and logical way, following overall general method which can be applied to build a standard procedure for different areas of training.
To sum up, with a short period of time since the establishment and a small team of scientists involved in full-time teaching and research, thanks to proper strategic orientation, a serious investment in human resources, great support from Vietnam National University, as well as the efforts of the university, VNU-UEB has gained the social recognition of its achievements. With the aim of research to improve the quality of training and the skillful combination of these two activities’ effects, VNU-UEB has been growing with firm steps towards quality and international standards.
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