A name to remember

Feng Qiu and his son, Austin.

What’s in a name?

Ask 2015 MBA graduate Feng Qiu.

Feng and his wife, Guanjun Xie, welcomed their first child March 30.

They named the baby boy Austin.

Yes, that’s right – the couple used the new home of the College of Business as inspiration for what to call their new son.

“I love this building; I love the College of Business,” Feng said. “I wanted my baby to know that this is the place where his father took off.”

In China, Feng failed his college entrance examination. After attending junior college, he improbably earned another crack at the exam and this time he passed, gaining admission to Wenzhou University. He majored in management and received a bachelor’s degree in business administration in June 2012.

“In China, very few junior college students get a second chance,” he said. “That inspired me.”

Wanting an overseas experience for graduate work, Feng selected Oregon State in part because it’s a member of the INTO University Partnerships program, which works with a number of universities in the U.S., United Kingdom and China to help international students succeed in their new countries.

“The program was very helpful for me to prepare for formal MBA study,” he said. “Also, Oregon is an amazing place.”

Feng began his MBA studies in fall 2012, and his graduate work centered around research led by Assistant Prof. Keith Leavitt. They’ve been looking at leadership behavior how it relates to personality – both a leader’s explicit personality and his or her implicit personality, the portion of personality that a person may be born with and may not even be aware of.

“Our work has looked at whether people who are implicitly aggressive are more likely to be abusive as supervisors when they experience emotional resource depletion,” Feng said. “People have limited emotional resources, and when something consumes them, it’s harder to have patience and very easy to get mad.”

Feng will next fall begin a Ph.D. program at the University of Oregon and plans to stay both in the U.S. and academia long term.

“I just feel like I belong here,” he said.

Wherever his path takes him, Feng will obviously never forget OSU.

“I love the College of Business,” said Feng, who his effusive in his gratitude toward his wife for supporting his studies – and agreeing to name their baby Austin. “This is the place where I studied hard and changed my life, and I wanted to remember this beauty forever. That’s why I named my baby this.”