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MayJune2006

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GLOBALIZATION MUST BE PART OF A BUSINESS SCHOOL'S MINDSET, NOT JUST ITS COURSE CATALOG. over the world, to give our students a personal tour of a new Volvo plan in Shanghai or a new bank in Taipei. Offer a wide selection of global experiences—in non-English- speaking countries. We need to send students not just to England or Australia, but to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, where they can immerse themselves in cultures different from their own. At Whitman, for example, we plan to take more students abroad in study groups. We recently took our executive and full- time MBAs for a weeklong tour of China, where they were given an insider's look at Chinese companies and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Gather a diverse student body. Attention to admissions is crucial when it comes to giving our students global experi- ences from the moment they step onto campus. To this end, Whit- man strives to admit a student body comprising approximately 50 percent non-U.S. citizens, from countries such as India, China, Tai- wan, Colombia, Ukraine, Korea, Thailand, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Holland. Seek out new opportunities to offer global exposure. We don't need to stay within the boundaries of a course or exchange program to infuse glo- balization into our programs. We can look for other ways to make it a part of our campus culture. For example, not only do we integrate international content into most of our courses, but we also require all Whitman MBA students to read our students' global devel- opment after graduation. As a university, we believe we also should help the compa- nies who hire our students with any visa arrangements or problems. We also should continue to be a source of information and support for our U.S. students who work overseas or for our interna- tional students who stay to work in the U.S. I'm sure that most busi- Melvin T. Stith Travels of a T-Shirt in a Global Econ- omy by Pietra Rivoli. Reading the book as a cohort gives our students yet another opportunity to explore their own roles in globalization. Put international partnerships in per- spective. Many business schools are seeking out partnerships with their international peers. Indeed, for smaller schools, partnerships may seem to be the only way to include a global component. But such partnerships alone do not make a business school a "global" business school. Such partnerships are only one piece of a larger global strategy and outlook. Don't stop "thinking global" at gradu- ation. As we redesign our MBA pro- gram at Whitman, we are also look- ing at what we can do to support ness schools are doing one, or some, of these initia- tives. But how many are doing them all? Integration of comprehensive, across- the-board global initiatives should be the norm at all business schools, especially if we want to make sure our current MBA students are the future leaders and driv- ers of this global economy. Fifty or even 20 years ago, it was unimaginable that Har- vard would extend its reach beyond Cambridge, Massachusetts, to offer programs in Beijing and Hong Kong, or that Wharton would look beyond Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to set up campuses in Tokyo and Singapore. But today, both sce- narios are realities, as many markets open themselves to Western busi- ness education, just as they did to Western business. Globalization must be part of a business school's mindset, not just its course catalog. Like busi- ness itself, business schools must be global, in mind and in deed. ■ z Melvin T. Stith is the dean of the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in New York. BizEd MAY/JUNE 2006 57

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