College President James Freedman on March 8 will take his role as spokesman for Dartmouth on a rare trip overseas to Hanoi, Vietnam, where he will help launch the second year of a program to assist the country's transition towards a capitalist economy.
The Hanoi School of Business -- the first business school in Vietnam -- and its International Executive Development Program were founded last year in conjunction with the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.
The school and program were developed to aid businessmen from top Vietnamese corporations prepare for Vietnam's transition into a market economy.
Nguyen Van Dao, President of the Vietnam National University, which oversees the Hanoi School of Business, extended an invitation to Freedman to deliver the opening address to the 30 Vietnamese business executives who will be participating in this year's program, and the College president accepted.
Freedman, who will be making his first-ever journey to Vietnam, said he was "very excited" about the upcoming trip. "Vietnam is obviously on the out-take of economic progress and I am very excited to be a part of this program."
The overseas trip marks somewhat of a departure from Freedman's routine travel schedule.
He is on the road extensively in major American cities, but Freedman previously told The Dartmouth that he has done "very little foreign travel."
Freedman told The Dartmouth that he traveled to Japan a few years ago looking for corporation donations and visiting a Japan Dartmouth club -- and he also recently vacationed in Dublin, Ireland. But the upcoming Vietnam trip will be his "first trip overseas for Dartmouth in a long time," he said.
Tuck School Dean Paul Danos will join Freedman for the trip, as will Joseph Massey, the director of Tuck's Center for Asia and Emerging Economies and six other faculty members of the Tuck School.
Freedman, who will be in Hanoi from March 8 through March 12, will meet with Nguyen to discuss ways of further strengthening the relationship between Dartmouth College and Vietnam National University.
In last year's inaugural program, Vietnamese businessmen came to the U.S., where they got to observe firsthand the strategies and practices of American businesses.
"The reason why we chose Vietnam was it let us see real closely the economy emerge from a socialist to a market economy," Danos said. "It's a learning experience for us to witness the transition into a new system."
This year's program will be similar to last year's. It will begin in Hanoi with 12 days of intensive study of modern business strategies, including financial accounting, marketing and operations management.
After completing the courses in Hanoi, the participants will then travel to the United States to visit corporations such as Boeing and Microsoft to witness how these companies conduct their businesses.
"They will also visit the Federal Reserve Bank, the New York Stock Exchange as well as Washington, D.C. to see how the American capitalist system works in relation to its government," Massey said.
Like last year's participants, the executives will also work in teams to create plans for new business ventures to present to the Tuck faculty and to American entrepreneurs at the culmination of the program, Danos said.
Some of last year's business venture plans have been evaluated and are currently under consideration for funding by some major corporations in the United States, Massey said.
The feedback from last year's participants was positive. Many of them had never been to the United States before and it was a very exciting experience for them, Danos said.
This year's program will be evaluated, and the program's directors will seek feedback from this year's participants as well, Danos said.
"We feel this program is a valuable experience for putting our foot on the ground in that part of the world and springboard into other parts of Asia," Danos said.
