Ever wonder what makes PSU’s academic leaders tick? What books line their shelves, what inspired them to pursue their field and what visions they have for PSU’s future? Inside Portland State’s “Deans Decoded” series takes you behind the scenes into the offices of Portland State’s distinguished deans. Join us as we decode the personalities behind the titles, one dean at a time.
Step into Dean Qing Hu’s office in The School of Business, and you’ll find a visionary with a drive to innovate and foster entrepreneurial thinking. With a deep commitment to student success, Dean Hu is redefining what it means to lead in business education.
For Dean Hu, the future of business is inseparable from the future of technology. He’s a vocal advocate for embracing AI as a powerful tool for learning, and believes that individuals should not only speak the language of AI but advance ideas with it as well.
As a first-generation college student from China, Dean Hu’s journey has taken him through research, teaching and leadership roles at institutions such as the City University of New York and Iowa State University. Along the way, his love of books, storytelling and travel shaped a career rooted in curiosity, connection and purpose.
Dean Hu brings decades of experience and inspiration to his role, along with a belief that schools should reflect the world their students are stepping into.
Inside Portland State’s Ruben Gill Herrera sat down with Dean Hu to chat about his background and what he’s looking forward to at PSU. Watch the video or read the full interview below to learn more.
RGH: Dean Hu, how do you start your day?
QH: I usually start my day at around 7:00 a.m. by reading The Wall Street Journal on my iPad and eating breakfast. I come to the office around 8:30 a.m. every day and prepare with emails. My meetings usually go from 9:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m., sometimes later. Every day is filled like that. A very busy week, but very fulfilling.
RGH: What was the last book you read?
QH: The last book I finished reading is called “Co-Intelligence” by a professor from the Wharton School of Business named Ethan Mollick. It’s about how the AI age has arrived and how we co-live with AI and AI technology.
RGH: Is there anything that you took away from that book?
QH: Absolutely. I've met Ethan Mollick at multiple conferences. He and I share very similar views about AI. How AI is transforming our lives, and how we should treat AI as a friend, a colleague, a team member, a coach and a co-creator. I also appreciate his vision for the future of AI. That is, there are four possibilities. The first one is that AI is not going to do anything at this rate for the foreseeable future. The worst-case scenario is that AI is going to become an artificial super intelligence. It's going to be smarter than all of us, and it's going to take the whole world from us.
Anyway, I don't necessarily think the first and the worst case scenario will happen, but anything in between is a possibility. We should embrace AI, learn everything about AI and take advantage of the superpower of artificial intelligence.
RGH: What book changed your life?
QH: The first one is "Iacocca: An Autobiography" by Lee Iacocca and William Novak. When I first read his book back in China, he inspired me. At that time, I was an engineer. He inspired me to think the impossible and do the unthinkable, which is to come to America to study. That led to where I am today.
The second book that I feel empowered and inspired by is the autobiography of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, called “Made in America.” That book inspires me to think every day that an ordinary person can accomplish extraordinary things that will impact the lives of millions of people.
RGH: What are you most passionate about?
QH: I am a first-generation college student. Before I came here, before I attended college in China, nobody in my family ever attended college. I truly believe that education transforms lives. I am most passionate about providing the best possible higher education to our students, to give them a chance to transform their lives and gain social and economic mobility.
RGH: How do you spend your free time?
QH: I love reading, outdoor activities and traveling. During the weekend, my wife and I normally go out. If the weather is good, we'll go running or hiking in the mountains or go to local parks to enjoy the natural beauty of Portland and what the area has to offer. If the weather is bad, I love to sit down and just read books. I try to schedule an annual vacation. I love to travel to different countries, experience different cultures and people and have fun.
RGH: Where did you grow up?
QH: I grew up in a very small rural area in the Northwestern part of China. So that little town I was born in had about 50,000 people, but today it has become a much bigger city. In that area, I was born and raised in a working-class family. My parents were workers in the local power plant.
RGH: What are you most excited about right now?
QH: I am very excited about the potential of AI and the transformative power of AI that is changing everything we are doing and what businesses are doing. As a result of that, in the business school, we have created a faculty task force to look at how we integrate AI into our business curriculum so that every one of our students will be able to speak the language of AI, understand the potential of AI and lead their teams or their companies by transforming the business processes, opening up new ideas, navigating a new market and being at the forefront of the AI revolution.
RGH: What is the best advice you’ve received?
QH: The first one comes from my Ph.D. advisor, Dr. David B. Hertz. When I became his doctoral student, he told me that to be a very successful scholar, you need to have a wide range of interests and not just focus on one area. Learn as many things as you can and be always curious about science, technology, human behavior, everything. Every day when I met with him, he asked me about my research or academic issues, and he asked me to tell him a story about Sherlock Holmes.
He had bought a book about Sherlock Holmes and gave it to me, and said, "You have to read a story every day. Then, when you come to meet me, retell that story." That forced me to improve my English and widen my interest, thinking about not just academic research, but a lot of interesting things.
The second one I would have to say is from my provost when I was at Iowa State University. I was the Associate Dean of the College of Business, and I got an opportunity to be invited on campus for an interview for a dean job at a different university. That was the first kind of invitation, a campus interview and I was very nervous. So I went to the provost, with whom I had become good friends. I said, "This is my opportunity. What advice would you have?" And he said, "Qing, you will be a dean one day, so just be yourself and have fun." The advice is very short, but these are the fundamental aspects everyone must address when facing uncertainty. Be yourself and have fun. Since then I have told many people who ask me for advice, "Just be yourself and have fun."
RGH: You have so many interesting mementos displayed on the walls here. Can you share with us how they relate to your career?
QH: Yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff. I can spend a whole day telling you the story about each of the items, but I would highlight two things. This is an award that I received from the National Association of Black Accountants, Baruch College chapter. The students from the association gave me this award because of all the work I did to support this association of students in their activities, and in supporting them to attend conferences, and engaging with them throughout the five years that I was at Baruch College. I very much appreciate the students' award for this.
Another interesting piece is this one. This is a piece of coal from a coal mine in Svalbard Island in the Arctic Circle. It is the only island in the Arctic Circle that has human beings on it year-round. However, the most interesting thing about Svalbard Island is that it's in the Arctic Circle. If you go there in December, it's always dark. The sun never rises above the horizon, so you don't see any sunlight for about three months. I was right there and I experienced three days of darkness, but the people on that island still go on with their regular work and their routine every day based on the clock.
RGH: Is there any more you want to talk about? An award?
QH: Yes, this is basically an album and a lot of signatures from when I left Iowa State University. From my students, faculty members and different activities. I have taken students to visit China, and you can see some of my colleagues. This is another interesting picture. That is when I was leading a neuroscience research project, even though I am not a neuroscientist. But I did conduct research based on the principles of neuroscience to study human behavior and human decision-making in the context of cybersecurity.
The experimental subject was to put on the head cover with all the electrodes to measure the electricity in their brain activity. To ensure the experiment was good and harmless, before I put students into this experiment, I did it to myself. That’s a picture of me doing this experiment. This is my dean at Iowa State before I left, and he organized a party for me. In the end, the people, the students and the faculty put together this beautiful album for my memory.
RGH: If you weren't the Dean of The School of Business, which field would you pursue?
QH: If I weren’t the Dean of The School of Business, I'd be a faculty member in the information systems area. I was trained as a computer information systems Ph.D. During my years as a Ph.D. student, I studied, interestingly enough, artificial intelligence. I studied how AI can be used in business decision-making. Thirty years later when ChatGPT came up, I was like, "Wow, this is exactly the things that we were dreaming of 30-some years ago, when we were doing neural networks research and machine learning and hoped that we could come up with something like that." But we were never able to do that. So today, with much powerful computational power, much advanced algorithms and a huge amount of data that have enabled AI to develop into ChatGPT, Google Gemini, those kinds of tools demonstrate the transformational power of AI.
RGH: Any last word for students?
QH: I would recommend to all students who are currently in different programs to focus on how AI technology is going to transform our lives. It’s going to impact your career down the road. If you are not at the forefront of AI, you will be replaced by those who understand AI and who can use AI. So, starting today, get to reading some books, watch YouTube, understand AI and participate in the programs that we are offering this fall.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity by Brianna Vasquez.
Photography by Jeremy Chun Sajqui