Thirty-one graduate business students from around the world gathered in Miami, Florida to participate in the Executive MBA (EMBA) Consortium, an innovative, weeklong study abroad program offered through the College of Business at Florida International University (FIU).
The EMBA Consortium enables students to select from any of the member schools—currently in Italy, China, Brazil and Russia—for this immersive experience in a new business environment with new peers. The 2012 offering brought 12 Russians, 11 Brazilians and eight Italians to FIU Downtown on Brickell, with tours of FIU’s main and north campuses.
Each day of the residency, titled “Managing Innovation in an Uncertain World,” offered a mixture of lectures by FIU Business faculty, including the EMBA program’s faculty director, Stephen Barnett, and visits to area businesses, such as Norwegian Cruise Line and West Baptist Hospital. The other sites offer a similar blend of classroom time and time at local businesses.
Chapman graduates and alumni travel abroad.
“In addition to the individuals who came to FIU, 26 FIU EMBA students and alumni opted to participate, with 12 going to COPPEAD Graduate School of Business, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; eight to Alma Graduate School, Bologna, Italy; four to MIRBIS, Moscow, Russia; and two to Chongqing University, Chongqing, China,” said Maria Sierra, the program’s associate director, operations.
One alumna, Maria Pieiga (EMBA ’09), senior division administrator, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, found her experiences at Alma Graduate School useful immediately, singling out two of the five courses in particular: rapid business modeling and innovation, and analytics for business modeling.
“Upon my return I started to implement some of the lessons I learned within my department and organization,” she said. “I shared this new-found knowledge with colleagues and staff to help us design a new business canvas to assist us in redefining our business model and review our performance analytics, a topic we have been focusing on recently.”
The consortium plans to grow, with Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, expected to join in 2013 and other universities under consideration.
