COB Receives Grant to Expand International Courses, Opportunities
Friday, June 11, 2010
Butler University College of Business (COB) is the recipient of a $175,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Business and International Education (BIE) Program that will be used to enhance its international curriculum and travel opportunities for COB students and faculty, as well as provide outreach to Central Indiana businesses. This is the third grant the COB has received from the Department of Education’s BIE Program.
“Like our real life, real business approach to business education, activities supported by the BIE grant will provide students and faculty with opportunities for hands-on learning; in many cases, in the countries they are studying in class,” said Bill Templeton, associate dean and professor of finance.
Grant activities will be broken down into the following three objectives: provide more internationalized curriculum and opportunities for students; strengthen the international business knowledge and experience of COB faculty; and provide outreach activities to the Central Indiana business community to assist them to compete effectively in the global economy.
Templeton said for undergraduates, the grant will result in new courses, many with study trips. One such course is an elective called “Doing Business in the European Union” that will include a 10-day trip to Europe. A similar course will be taught in Asia. The College is also investigating teaching some of the business core classes abroad.
“One idea is to teach an international economics course next summer in Greece,” said Templeton. “Since electives don’t always fit neatly into required course work, utilizing core classes will allow for more students to have international experiences.”
At the MBA level, the grant will support existing courses like Applied International Business, where students spend a semester studying a Central Indiana company before researching and traveling to the BRIC market (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) the company would like to enter. The grant will also support faculty-led study trips, which in the past have gone to Chile, Brazil, China, and most recently, Japan. “The goal is to do three study trips per year,” said Templeton.
The second objective of the grant supports faculty development. “As we develop the international business courses and study trips, we will use teams of two or three faculty members, led by the most internationally knowledgeable and experienced person. This will increase the number of COB faculty who are able to teach international business classes on campus and to organize and lead study programs abroad for undergraduate or graduate students,” explained Templeton.
The College will also promote faculty development through various channels: weekly meetings of an International Business Faculty Reading Group; competitively awarded small grants for international business faculty development projects; and faculty participation in business outreach programs – the final objective of the grant.
Among the activities planned for the Central Indiana business community will be seminars on international topics, the focus of which will be coordinated with the MBA study trips, allowing up to five seminar participants to join in on the trips.
“The idea behind all of this is to get students to see that business is a global activity, and to prepare them to contribute to the global activities of the companies and organizations they work for,” said Templeton.
Contact: Courtney Tuell
(317) 940-9807
ctuell@butler.edu
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