From the Dean

Headshot of Dean Wen

Dr. Joseph Wen

Dean, College of Business Administration & Public Policy

Joseph Wen, Dean of the College of Business Administration and Public Policy (CBAPP), is the longest-serving Dean at CSUDH, having started in his position in 2012. A native of Taiwan, Wen earned his Doctorate in Information Systems from Virginia Commonwealth University before embarking on an academic career that has taken him across the country and world.

Prior to joining CSUDH, Wen held faculty positions at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Southeast Missouri State, Illinois State, Rutgers, and Emporia State University. He has also served as a visiting professor at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. His scholarship focuses on e-commerce strategies and information science, two disciplines that have gained importance in business circles since his tenure at CSUDH began.

Q: What is the mission of CBAPP under your leadership?

A: “Well, we have two key missions. One is to provide high quality academic programs. The second is to provide a great university learning experience for students. As President Parham likes to say, “We have two North Stars.”

Q: What impact will the new Innovation and Instruction (I&I) building have on your college?

A: “It will have a major impact. It will completely change the way we teach our classes. All the classrooms are designed to enable active learning and teaching, which is very different from a traditional classroom.

In active learning, we’ll be putting a lot of focus on the “Aha!” moment for students, that sudden instant of discovery. To me, that is something that’s missing in traditional higher education, which is lecture, lecture, lecture. You listen and listen, and fall asleep. You don’t really remember the material. To me, what I still remember 35 years after I graduated from my university are those “Aha!” moments.

We want our active learning classrooms to provide those moments, to change the lives of the students who come through the building to take classes.”

Q: What does CBAPP’s recent accreditation mean for the college?

A: “Our accreditation by AACSB International (AACSB) means that the quality of our academic programs is the highest you can get. The accreditation tells us that in terms of academic quality, we are becoming an elite program.

But we are not only accredited by AACSB. Our public policy school is also accredited by NASPAA (Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration). You may see some AACSB-accredited schools, and you may see some NASPAA-accredited schools, but very few colleges are accredited by both organizations. So we’re very proud of that. With these dual accreditations, we are becoming an elite school. We’re heading even higher in the future, because of these accreditations and the new building. This really is the perfect school for students studying private or public administration. The future of the school is very bright.”

To read more, view the CSUDH Magazine.

Contact Information

  jwen@csudh.edu

  (310) 243-2252