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. 765-2 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 2013

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, Febuary 1, 2013 at 4pm.  Grades are based on each student’s participation in required activities and fulfillment of requirements.

Applications:

On Tuesday, September 11, 2012, there will be a Global MBA course info session from 12:15pm -1:00pm 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 21.

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
Chile/ Argentina     TBD
China TBD

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 course is a collaborative program offered by the UW-Madison and 11 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 global competitiveness. Students work virtually during spring semester and then travel in-country during the last two weeks of May. Spring 2013 projects will take place in India, China, Brazil and Japan.

For more detailed information, please visit the GBP webpage or contact Susan Huber Miller, CIBER Managing Director and Director of Global Applied Learning at shubermiller@bus.wisc.edu; 608-263-7682.