By Peter C. Young, Ph.D.
For the past twelve months, the Opus College of Business has been working through the development of its Global Business Education (GBE) Initiative. Although there is much, much work remaining, we believe the time is right to widen the scope of discussion on our future challenges and opportunities. To this end the GBE Blog is intended to inform stakeholders and interested individuals of current activities and upcoming events, but also — and importantly — to invite input from those stakeholders and other interested individuals.
OCB has publicly committed to developing global leaders and though there are many ways we could embellish our intentions, the motive for the global business education initiative boils down to a simple fact. We promise our students that we intend to assist them in developing the capabilities and knowledge to become global leaders, and to do so by:
- Providing experiences that broaden students’ horizons
- Building knowledge and skills relevant to leading in a global setting
- Developing capabilities to apply knowledge, skills and experience to meet the challenges of globalization
- Providing wider ranging assistance to businesses in our market to improve their prospects for international/global success
- Emphasizing what is sometimes called the ‘glocal’ dimension of globalization. UST’s historic commitment to the local community translates into a specific charge to understand how our community benefits from global engagement and success.
Follow the GBE Blog for upcoming information on events and announcements. Readers will see information on short term courses abroad for the 2012-2013 academic year, information on a fall kick-off event that will launch the next phase of the GBE Initiative, announcements on future collaborations, and much more.
As I noted at the outset, one of the key purposes of this blog is to invite feedback and participation in the GBE Initiative; in fact, to begin building a community of individuals with an active interest in the development of meaningful globally-oriented experiences. To that end I very much want to encourage you to become a part of the GBE community.