The Wisconsin MBA is committed to helping you gain the experiences necessary to prepare you for work in a global economy. Thus, international trips, applied projects, and a global focus throughout the curriculum are hallmarks of the Wisconsin MBA.

Students have the opportunity to obtain international business experience during student-planned and led study tours. These tours include meetings with senior business executives, government leaders, and educators in key business locations around the world. By supplementing the business meetings with cultural and social activities, students acquire a holistic understanding of a foreign country or region while gaining an appreciation of local customs.

You may want to consider one of the annual Winter Break for-credit study abroad opportunities, or IB. 768-2 credit course. As part of this for-credit study abroad trip, Wisconsin MBA students travel to a global destination (voted on by students) for a twelve-day immersion. The experience includes corporate site visits, cultural visits, and meetings with local business professionals.

The cost of the experience is shared by the participating students and the Wisconsin School of Business. Costs are kept low to try to encourage as many students as possible to take advantage of these courses.

Discover your options and the requirements below:

Wisconsin MBA Global Business Program 2012

This 2-credit course includes travel abroad to Brazil or South Africa to meet with business professionals and government officials and have a hands-on, international business management learning experience.  The trip will feature cultural activities and excursions, as well as meetings with business executives, strategists and government leaders. Each study tour has a limited number of spaces available.  Selections will be made based on the criteria outlined below.

Prerequisites:

This course is part of the Wisconsin MBA Global Business Program and thus only full-time enrolled UW-Madison MBA students may participate.  An interest in the business environment in the respective country is necessary, but no language competence is required.

Course content:

Participation in this trip includes enrollment in a two-credit contemporary topics course.  Students do not have to pay tuition, only the travel costs and other expenses based on trip budget.

Required activities include and are not limited to pre-departure orientation meetings (total will most likely include 8 meetings, one of which will be a post trip debriefing,) presentations at overseas venues and visits to various business enterprises. Pre-Trip Meetings will take place from 12:15pm-1:00pm on Wednesdays during the months of October and November. A reflection paper about the experience is also required, and will be due by Friday, January 27, 2012 at 4pm.  Grades are based on each student’s participation in required activities and fulfillment of requirements.

Applications:

On Tuesday, September 13, 2011, there will be a Global MBA trip info session from 12:15-1:00 pm in the Executive Dining Room.  Students will then have 10 days to hand in an application and a $500 non-refundable deposit check, made payable to the Wisconsin School of Business.

After the application period has passed, and if demand exceeds supply for a particular trip, a lottery will be held to decide the students that will be chosen for the trips.  In addition, students will have the opportunity to rank order their trip choices on their application (for example, if a student’s first choice trip is full, he/she might be able to be accepted into a second-choice trip).  We would encourage you to include both trips in your rankings to increase your chance of being selected.

The following application, a copy of your course grid and  a non-refundable deposit check for $500, must be submitted to the MBA Program Office, 2450 Grainger by no later than 4:00pm on Friday, September 23.

Students selected to participate on a trip will be expected to pay the remainder of the trip costs by Thursday, December 1. The anticipated costs for Brazil are $3,000 and South Africa $3500. Final trip costs will be generated in October.

In addition to your class schedule, please include any additional times you are unavailable to meet (ie. TAing a class, PA hours)

Questions about the trip should be directed to:

Trip Contacts
Destination            Trip Leaders
Brazil     Mark Matosian
South Africa Blair Sanford

International Business 765/Global Business Project (GBP) for 3 Credits

Made available through the UW-Madison Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), this three credit spring 2012 course is a collaborative program offered by the UW-Madison and 13 other participating CIBER schools.

The course puts teams of 4-6 MBA students together from leading business schools to work solving real problems facing companies wanting to improve their competitiveness in markets such as India, China, Brazil and Thailand. MBA students apply functional, cross-cultural, foreign language and virtual teamwork skills to produce strategic advice that is focused, compelling and actionable. One to two students per team are required to be fluent in the local language of the country where their project is focused – but prior language experience is not required to participate in the course. 

Students are selected through a competitive application process and each team is a mixture of students from the participating schools. All students travel to Washington D.C. in mid March for “kick-off” weekend where they meet their fellow team members, their project-specific faculty advisor, the business language mentor who oversees all of the projects for a particular country and at least one member of the client organization.

Teams work together virtually from mid-March to early May - gathering data and investigating possible solutions to the business challenges defining their project. In May, the teams travel overseas for two weeks of in-country work. Each project culminates with a formal presentation of a recommended action plan for the respective client to implement over the next 12-18 months. Each team also must submit a final written report by June 30. The cost of the experience is shared by the client organizations, participating students and the Centers for International Business Education and Research (CIBERs). 

For more information about the Global Business Project, please contact Susan Huber Miller, CIBER Managing Director at shubermiller@bus.wisc.edu or by phone at 263-7682. 

Want to learn more about GBP?

New Perspectives

The Wisconsin MBA Global Trips give students first-hand insight into how the business world is profoundly connected while encouraging curiosity and openness about business differences and similarities. Skills with cultural understanding and global outlook will be valuable assets to employers. The Wisconsin MBA has travelled to Turkey, Vietnam, Dubai, Japan, Brazil, China, India, Chile, Argentina and South Africa. This year's destinations are Africa and South America.

  • You will learn about the business and cultural environment of the region you are visiting.
  • You will develop a better understanding of how to successfully foster business interactions with global clients.
  • You will become more effective in your own organization by becoming familiar with a global business environment.
  • You will have fun!