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New Study Tour Model Gives Students More Options
Students on the India study tour at the Taj Mahal.
To supplement its semester-long study-abroad options, the Wisconsin School of Business has developed a new model to provide undergraduate students with an overseas learning experience: the integrated study tour. This model combines a semester of classroom instruction with a short international trip. “It’s great to travel, but you get a lot more out of it if you’re prepared, because you can put the experience in context,” said Associate Professor Alex Stajkovic, who led his second study tour in March.
During 2008-2009, with support from CIBER, two variations of the model were offered to students from across campus. Sachin Tuli, a lecturer in international business and co-director of International Programs, taught the Emerging India class during the fall, which included a visit to that country in January. Stajkovic’s Managing Across Cultures course, offered during the spring semester, incorporated a trip to China over spring break. Both courses taught students about the political economies, histories, and cultures of each country, and prepared them for the experiences they would have in country. Pre-trip exercises included research and group presentations on economic sectors or companies the groups would visit. This preparation enabled students to ask better questions during meetings and site visits, said Tuli. Each instructor expects to offer a similar course in upcoming semesters, and in spring 2010 Professor Randall Dunham will add a third option focused on Vietnam.
Tuli developed the India course because of that country’s role in the global economy. With 15 percent of the world’s population (second to China), India boasts a middle class of more than 50 million people, and has experienced annual GDP growth of 8-9 percent for the last four years (before the current economic downturn); yet India remains home to one of the largest populations of people living in poverty. Despite the attention given to the business processing and call center jobs outsourced to India, Tuli said the nation’s services industry is still relatively small in terms of employment, and the country has not embraced the foreign direct investment necessary to develop high-level manufacturing.
The UW students explored these issues through visits to companies in the insurance, real estate, and finance industries in Mumbai and New Delhi, and heard a variety of perspectives during meetings with a UW alumnus working in his native India, American expatriates, and officials of the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service. A visit to a village outside New Delhi gave students the opportunity to see the contrasts between India’s modern urban areas and rural areas that lack electricity, sewer systems, and running water. “To see these stark differences made quite an impact on them,” said Tuli.
Like India, China has experienced strong long-term economic growth: an average of almost 10 percent for the past two decades. The world’s most populous nation, China is the fourth-largest economy after the U.S., Japan, and Germany. Stajkovic, however, stressed the importance of understanding the nation’s economic and social diversity. The in-country experience mixed visits to multinational companies and affluent areas of Beijing and Shanghai with opportunities to see people living and working in poor areas. Stajkovic, who developed the integrated study tour model in conjunction with Dunham in 2007, enhanced the site visits this year. He chose to view the Great Wall of China from a different pass, for example, after which the group visited two private homes in a nearby village. Stajkovic also added a visit to Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he and a Tsinghua professor gave a joint lecture on cross-cultural motivation, and the Wisconsin students mixed with their Chinese peers.
The timing of the China tour gave the students several weeks for formal post-trip reflection and assessment. Stajkovic required students to keep journals throughout the semester, and back in Madison led them through a group exercise to identify the top-five things learned from the classroom and overseas experiences. Number one was “keep your mind open,” he said. Another reflected a point Stajkovic likes to emphasize: “train your mind to think about similarities instead of differences.”