As business goes global, more MBA students are looking for ways to gain international experience. A number of leading business schools now offer students an opportunity to gain in-country experience while using their knowledge of business to help address pressing social issues. Today we’ll take a closer look at the programs offered by the Johnson School of Business at Cornell, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and the Wharton School at UPenn.
At Cornell, Johnson’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise sponsors a variety of experiential learning opportunities, inviting students to spend their breaks consulting on sustainability-related projects in emerging markets. In 2005, students traveled to Senegal, where they created strategies to improve the potential of ecotourism in the Parc National des Oiseaux du Djoudj, a sanctuary for migratory birds. In 2006, participants explored the possibility of a mixed-use ecotourism project in Costa Rica.
At Stanford, the school’s Global Management Program organizes the Global Management Immersion Experience (GMIX), a month-long internship that takes place at the end of the first summer, usually after a longer traditional internship. Sponsor organizations range from international companies to small startups and non-profits, and they generally seek students to work on a focused project over the course of a few weeks. Following the international experience itself, students complete a research project and compose a paper on a topic related to their internship, earning two units of credit.
At Wharton, the school’s International Volunteer Program (IVP), a non-profit, student-run organization, has helped small teams of student volunteers arrange consulting engagements with charitable institutions in developing countries for more than 20 years. These summer trips usually last two to four weeks; sixty MBA students worked on 19 projects in 15 countries during the summer of 2006. The club’s annual fundraising efforts usually generate enough money to cover most of the travel and organizational costs of the program for participants. In addition to the standard IVP trips, the Healthcare Alumni Association also organizes several International Volunteer Projects open to both students and alumni. During the summer of 2006, these projects included building a Wellness Center in South Africa, supporting a program for genocide survivors living with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, and developing microfinance projects in Tanzania and the Marshall Islands.
For more information on the international consulting opportunities at the leading schools, be sure to check out their websites or the International Focus and Special Projects sections of the Clear Admit School Guides!
