College of Management Hosts Meeting of Global Business School Leaders
The gathering, one of three meetings held each year on site at the partner schools, is part of IPBS’s process of assuring quality educational experiences for their schools’ participating students.
“We get to know each other fairly well as we work through details of our academic programs in these face-to-face meetings,” said Ira R. Weiss, dean of the NC State College of Management.
“As a result, we come away assured that our students will have quality experiences as they study business topics in another country. And because of our close collaboration, especially with our dual degree program, we can be certain that credits will transfer so that our students will continue to advance toward their academic degrees as they gain a global perspective from their international experiences,” he said.
As presenter at the NC State Office of International Affair’s March 25 speakers program, Weiss discussed the IPBS membership and other steps the college is taking to globalize its curriculum.
Those steps provide more than a selection of business courses taught in an international setting, he said. “Students are learning in the language of the culture, they’re living in the community, and they are visiting businesses as part of their courses, so they come away with a good understanding of how commerce is conducted in another country while also learning subject matter in the classroom,” he said.
The partnerships also extend beyond the immediate program, to include contacts the individual schools have in other international schools, in other countries. “Tapping into this broader network opens doors to new international study opportunities,” Weiss said. “If I wanted to explore options for our students in Poland, for example, I could ask one of the IPBS partners about their contacts in that country.”
This expanded network also provides new opportunities for faculty interested in bringing an international perspective to their research activities as well as academic programs.
An example of that is the partnership being developed with Nyenrode University in The Netherlands. “They were very interested in finding a university on the East Coast of the U.S. with a focus on biosciences, and they found us on the Internet,” Weiss said. The NC State College of Management has a Biosciences Management initiative that supports the MBA biosciences concentration in the college’s Jenkins Jenkins Graduate School of Management, as well as a new Executive Programs offering. Faculty from Nyenrode spoke at the initiative’s BioSciences Forum in 2009, and discussions continue on establishing a partnership between the two schools.
The college’s Master of Global Innovation Management, now in its second year, is another partnership example. This dual degree program is offered jointly with the Université Paul Cézanne IAE Graduate School of Management in Puyricard near Aix-en-Provence. “We are looking to replicate this model with other international partners,” Weiss said.
This expansion of international programs is in keeping with recommendations of a report, Leadership for Challenging Times, produced by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ Commission on Presidential Leadership and Global Competitiveness. That report call for strengthening global awareness and intercultural engagement.
IPBS Schools
- France: Reims Management School (CESEM)
- Germany: Reutlingen University (ESB)
- Ireland: Dublin City University (The Business School)
- Italy: Universita Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore (Sede di Piacenza)
- Mexico: Universidad de las America (Escuela de Negocios)
- Spain: Universidad Pontificia Commillas (ICADE)
- United Kingdom: Lancaster University (The Management School)
- USA: Northeastern University (College of Business Administration)
- USA: North Carolina State University (College of Management and Jenkins Graduate School of Management)
Read more:
- Leadership for Challenging Times, Report from the American Association of State Colleges and University’s Commission on Presidential Leadership and Global Competitiveness
