Getting to know Europe
by Vincent Ciccarello
Four
weeks in Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona during the European
summer sound like a nice way to spend the semester break. But, as five
UniSA postgraduate business students who recently returned from the Know
Europe study tour will tell you, this was anything but a holiday.
Developed 13 years ago and led by UniSA partner Normandy Business School, the Know Europe program provides participants with a first-hand initiation into European business through an intensive series of lectures, field trips and workshops covering topics such as EU law, regional economics, finance and strategic marketing. The program is credited towards the students’ home qualifications.
MBA student and SES corporate communications manager, Judith Bleechmore, said Know Europe is about as good as it gets in terms of a university cultural program.
"I’ve done a huge amount of travel in my life but I’ve never had anything I’ve enjoyed more than this," she said. "It was a joyous expansion of my knowledge about business in Europe. I’ve been in business for 40 years and I’ve had a lot of dealings with businesses overseas. But here we are actually visiting – seeing the very best in businesses in Europe, hearing about new business techniques, seeing the best in marketing."
For the other students, this was their first European visit.
Karen Richardson, a team leader with EDS Australia studying a graduate diploma in business, said she was exposed to the large differences between countries in Europe and a "fantastic array of cultures" within the tour group, which included Russians, Brazilian, Honduran, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai.
"It was a brilliant addition to the course," she said. "I’ve got a real interest in how cultural differences impact business relations, so I went with that particularly in mind. You had different cultures to talk to everyday if you wanted to."
Arts and cultural management international student Peng Peng Wang agreed.
"I think it was very good preparation in my future job for dealing with people," she said. "We do teamwork here at the University in assignments but it’s not the same as living together, working together and sharing stories. I think this real-life scenario is very important."
The study tour also surpassed the expectations of Best Panich, a Thai doctor of business administration candidate.
"You couldn’t usually expect to travel with so many people from different backgrounds, from different parts of the world and with different ways of thinking," he said.
Associate Professor David Rivett, Dean: International in UniSA’s Division
of Business, said
it was good to see the interaction of students from different cultural
backgrounds who may never have engaged with each other.
"This is actually one of the deep objectives of our internationalisation strategy," Prof Rivett said. "The objective of producing graduates with an international perspective as professionals and citizens is reflected in UniSA’s graduate quality seven. We’re interested in preparing students to be responsible global citizens as well as national citizens. And we’re interested in people being able to engage with other cultures and understand other cultural points of view to be able to work with other cultures not only in their future business lives but in their lives as a whole."
The Division of Business has also developed an international double degree with the Normandy Business School, during which students study the Bachelor of European Business for one year in France. For more information about this qualification or the Know Europe study tour, contact Sarah Collyer-Braham at +61 (0)8 8302 0880 or sarah.collyer-braham@unisa.edu.au