Seshan Ramaswami

The most attractive quality of SMU of course was that it was in Singapore, a very interesting culturally diverse nation-state that takes education and innovation seriously. The SMU “experiment” was a bold and innovative one – bringing the best practices of higher American education to Singapore Universities, while at the same time designing the curriculum and pedagogy in response to local and global employer needs, making research a cornerstone of faculty hiring from the beginning, and the close collaboration with the Wharton school in the initial days. I was a visiting faculty at Wharton in 1999 and learnt first-hand about this exciting collaboration from the then-President of SMU, Professor Janice Bellace. 

I teach Marketing (the introductory course) at the undergraduate level, and I have taught Consumer Behaviour at undergraduate, MBA and PhD levels. 

The best aspect of teaching at SMU to me personally is helping to mould something fantastic out of the already very good “material” that we get in terms of incoming students. Helping them expand their idea of what life could be, giving them courage to experiment, to go overseas, to make choices that are out of the norm, to challenge themselves intellectually instead of taking the easy way out – that is my constant goal in my interactions with students. 

I love the arts myself, and I love being within a short walk of so many fantastic theatres – SOTA, La Salle, NAFA, the Drama Centre, Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, the Esplanade – are all within a short walk, as are a handful of museums. So I constantly encourage students to think of life at SMU beyond the classroom – to attend concerts, talks and other events at all these places. As a business school faculty, I often have guest lecturers in my class – the city location makes it so much easier to invite speakers over.