Smeal MBA Students Travel To Four International Cities For Global Immersion

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (February 27, 2007) – First-year Smeal College of Business MBA students will travel to one of four pivotal global business regions next week as they participate in the Smeal MBA Program's annual Global Immersion component.

This international business experience, launched in 2004 as a required part of the MBA curriculum, offers students firsthand exposure to the international economy and the particular challenges and opportunities of doing business in another culture and under different laws and regulations.

This year, students will spend a week in Santiago, Chile; Shanghai, China; Istanbul, Turkey; or San Francisco, Calif.—the latter for international students. During the trip, they'll meet with leaders of multinational corporations to discuss globalization strategies and the issues they face in the global marketplace. Students may also tour manufacturing facilities and corporate offices, and take courses at partnering universities.

A newly launched Global Immersion Web site provides details on the trips and allows visitors to follow along online in travel logs written by participating students. Each day, during the week of March 5, two students in each city will provide updates and photos of their experiences in each city.

Multimedia presentations from each student correspondent are online now, in which they introduce themselves, share their backgrounds, and talk about their expectations for the experience.

The Web site also features background information on the destinations and their relevance to the global economy, as well as video presentations from Smeal faculty members on the Global Immersion program itself.

Smeal is one of the few public colleges nationwide that require their students to travel abroad as part of the MBA program. All first-year Smeal MBA students must participate in the Global Immersion program.

The new Global Immersion Web site is at www.smeal.psu.edu/goglobal.