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Learning from the Inside Educators emphasize that it takes more than "academic tourism" to prepare students to work effectively in global business environments. by Tricia Bisoux T he global experiences students want today are different from what they wanted ten years ago. Then, students were happy to visit a country where they'd never been for a few days, see the sights, interact with local culture, and return home "enriched." Today, that kind of "aca- demic tourism" isn't enough, says Peter Rodriguez, direc- tor of the Darden Center for Global Initiatives at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Business students, especially, want to know what countries are like from the inside. "We have to help stu- dents explore a region and culture more than they can on a mere study vacation," says Rodriguez. "Students want to be in the mix—they want to be in the meeting rooms and on the shop floor. They want to work on actual projects and spend a semester helping an entre- preneur get his business off the ground." In response to demand for new kinds of global experi- ences, many schools are developing more involved, more hands-on models—and some are expanding the definition of what "global" means to business. 34 It's All About Experience Darden meets this demand through programs such as its Global Business Experi- ence. Each GBE is a one- or two-week course for MBAs that takes place in either China, Europe, Central America, Egypt, Bahrain, or Israel. The school also offers its Darden Global Business Projects (DGBP), semester- long courses in which MBA and EMBA students work on a business plan for entrepre- neurs in emerging markets. Rodriguez always takes his DGBP students to either Nicaragua or El Salvador. Last year, for example, Rodriguez and a group of students worked with a Nicaraguan group that wanted to build low-cost, environmentally sustain- able homes for low-income families. Not only did this project teach students how differently two cultures can view the same situation, but it presented a challenge that even Rodriguez didn't anticipate. After working all semes- ter to secure funding for the entrepreneurs' enterprise, the students excitedly went to their clients with the news that they had found an investor. Rodriguez and his students were shocked when the entrepreneurs BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 refused to enter into the partnership. "We discovered that in Nicaraguan culture, people do not trust an investor who's not a close friend or fam- ily member. The concept of an equity partner made no sense to them," he explains. "It was astonishing. They told us they'd rather have a loan, even though Nicaraguan banks charge exorbitant rates. We made some broad assumptions—we never imagined they wouldn't want the funding!" Business plans can look far too easy on the black- board, says Rodriguez. Only when the students arrived in Nicaragua did they discover governmental and cultural obstacles that they didn't expect—and often didn't understand. If a project doesn't cause students to constantly ques- tion themselves and their assumptions, then it's not meeting the objective of a global education, says Rodriguez. "As business faculty, we have to provide Carlson students examine the pet food aisle at a Hungarian grocer y store, as part of their research for Cargill.