Undergraduate honors students last fall jump-started their academic year—and
gained valuable firsthand insight about international business—with visits to six manufacturing plants in Mexico. Two other groups of students gained a different kind of international experience, thanks to the videoconferencing technology available at the Fisher College complex.

The 16 honors students enrolled in Associate Professor G. Keong Leong’s new Emerging Markets Field Study class spent their last few weeks of summer vacation reading case studies and articles to acquaint themselves with the business environment and culture in Mexico. Then just before classes began, they headed south to Mexicali and Ensenada, where they toured manufacturing plants and talked with plant managers about the implications of NAFTA, and human resources, environmental and other management issues.

A new import–export class provided two groups of Fisher students with a different kind of international experience. Rather than boarding airplanes, these students settled into their tiered classroom seats in Gerlach Hall for face-to-face, real-time conversations with students at the University of Witwatersrand (“Wits”) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Professor Stephen Hills at the Fisher College and Professor Steven Burgess, a Fisher College alumnus who was on the faculty at Wits, guided the students at both ends through hands-on lessons about the intricacies of trade between the two countries. The students gained practical experience by providing research support for five businesses exploring such trade opportunities.

Both courses were administered through the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) based at the college. The Wits course was supported by a grant from the Alcoa Foundation and received additional assistance from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Export Assistance Center in Columbus.