Bringing Global Learning to Life

When it comes to a true global education, sometimes you just have to be there.

Students can learn about the tenets of global business in class, but there’s no substitute for experience. That’s why the Smith School gives all of its Executive MBA and custom MBA students in Asia, Europe and the United States the opportunity for real-life global experiences through the global electives courses offered at Smith learning locations around the world. Each May and November executives from both the United States and China are given the option to take their elective courses in College Park, Beijing or Shanghai.

“Our executive MBA students love the opportunity,” says Rob Sheehan, Smith academic director of Executive MBA and executive degree programs. “You can read about a flat world, but meeting people half-way across the globe, taking a course with them, and exchanging views on common problems helps you really get it.”

Smith builds a global component into all of its Executive MBA programs – including the chance for business managers to interact with other Smith EMBA program participants in their home countries in Europe, Asia and North America.

The most recent such trip was in May 2007, when participants in Smith’s Executive MBA program in College Park and the Smith-GSBA Global Executive MBA program in Zürich exchanged knowledge and perspective in an advanced strategy course with peers drawn from Smith’s Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin Executive MBA and custom MBA programs. As part of the course students worked on a “living case study” that explored a real-time problem facing Shui On Development Limited, a major Chinese real-estate development company.

“The course provided me with insight into the perspectives that executives from other parts of the world use to evaluate and analyze business problems and opportunities,” says Bambo Bamgbose, vice president and CFO of e-Management, Inc., who took part in the May 2007 global elective. “It also provided me with an opportunity to see how business is conducted in a country with a different political and economic system.”

For Cahba Kingwood, regional executive with Sun Microsystems, Inc., who took part in a global elective last year, the time spent with his classmates was as important for his education as the academic material being taught. “Because of the interaction I had with the Beijing students who were in my class, I got a good understanding of how Chinese people see business, how they view the U.S. market and what the areas for growth are,” says Kingwood. “We were able to have business conversations; we interacted in team projects in class and had social times such as dinners and sight-seeing trips. I also had the chance to reconnect with some of the students who came to College Park from Shanghai in May 2006.”

If you’re interested in a global elective, Bamgbose and Kingwood have some practical advice. “Students taking a global elective in a location with a time difference of more than eight hours should give themselves sufficient time to adjust in order to be ready to go when the class begins,” says Bambgose. And plan some extra travel time after your class, adds Kingwood: “You’ll make a lot of new friends during the course who can give you advice on where to go and what to see in the host country. They are brilliant folks, and you can learn a lot from your colleagues in the other cohorts.”

▓ Rebecca Winner, Office of Marketing Communications