While the pandemic imposed inconvenient restrictions on face-to-face activities, it also sparked the widespread adoption of web conferencing applications. This has facilitated high-quality virtual communication that transcends the boundaries of geography, creating new and creative opportunities. One of these has been the NUS Business School Marketing Interactive (MINT) student club’s virtual mentoring partnership with Jissen High School in Japan.
Mentoring Across Borders
Virtual lecture in progress
(Largest frame: Jissen High School students, smaller frames: NUS MINT mentors)
How it all began
The power of network connections is far-reaching and lasting. One of the Business School’s adjunct faculty and alumna, Wendy Lim, invited one of her Harvard Business School classmates, Masatsugu Fujii, to conduct a guest lecture to the NUS Business School students. Masatsugu left deeply impressed by the intelligence of NUS students. In April 2021, he took on the role of global education advisor at Jissen High School and was tasked to rethink the one-year study abroad programme in Canada, where six second-year students had to cut short their stay, and could not benefit fully from the programme. An idea was hatched to engage business school students who could guide and mentor the Jissen High School students, and NUS Business School naturally came to mind. Masatsugu reached out to Wendy who then linked him up with NUS MINT through Associate Professor Ang Swee Hoon, and the rest is history.
Making it happen
Receiving this interesting proposal, the NUS MINT leadership committee quickly swung into action. “It is difficult making friends outside of Singapore during this pandemic season, so I found this initiative extremely meaningful.”, said Lee Sin Yee, one of the MINT organising committee members.
Tapping on their own marketing knowledge and expertise, the committee designed a crash course in marketing, comprising two online lectures on the fundamentals of marketing, three mentoring sessions where one NUS BIZ student would mentor a pair of Jissen students, and a marketing project. At the end of the course, Jissen students would have to submit their business plan, marketing plan, and deliver a final presentation to a judging panel comprising NUS Business School lecturers and student mentors.
Jissen High School students delivering their presentation to the NUS MINT evaluation panel
Overcoming the odds with passion and adaptability
The cross-cultural mentorship journey was by no means a smooth-sailing one, the language barrier being the toughest obstacle. The NUS MINT mentors pressed on to diligently break the marketing concepts down, and communicate them in a clear and simple manner. They also actively used examples from Japan, which made the concepts easier for the Jissen students to relate to. Japanese BBA students also stepped forward to join the mentor team, which proved to be a great help.
“… I think my proficiency in the Japanese language was helpful during the mentorship. Although the basic form of communication was in English, I was able to translate some words to Japanese whenever the students had trouble understanding.” – Higashitani Kohki, MINT mentor
The beauty of peer learning is that both parties benefit. In the process of teaching younger students about marketing, the MINT mentors were able to crystallise their own knowledge, and really grasp the fundamental concepts well before imparting them to the Jissen students. This has helped them manage the more advanced frameworks and concepts in the higher level marketing modules.