Global citizenship: School of Business prepares students for 21st-century realities
Understanding cultural nuances key to working in business today
A globally minded student is a prepared student. With the worldwide reach of modern business, it makes good sense that today’s business students are groomed to compete in this global realm. To help its students adapt to our ever-shrinking world, University of Phoenix places a strong emphasis on global citizenship throughout its curriculum.
“When we were examining the various 21st-century skills as the University had defined them, we found that they actually reflected what the School of Business has already been teaching its students over the past decade,” says Brian Lindquist, Ph.D., associate vice president of academic affairs and dean of the School of Business. “Skills like flexibility, adaptability, ethics, and global citizenship are really timeless, but they also help expand the goals of our degree programs and place them in a contemporary context.”
“The University’s recent initiative helped us put a finer point on what already existed in our curriculum,” Lindquist explains. According to Lindquist and other College of Business personnel, its degree programs and course curricula help “guide students’ self-discovery, values awareness, social responsibility, and the development of strong interpersonal skills for real-world business success in a global environment.”
Dr. Bill Berry, who holds a Doctor of Management degree and serves as executive director of the School of Business, elaborates further. “What really makes our degree programs truly global are the shared experiences of our faculty and our students,” he says. “We have faculty and students literally all over the world, all taking courses together. We also have a great depth of global experience among both our faculty and students. We have people who have travelled the world, done business throughout the world, and are even natives of other countries. So that’s of course going to be reflected in our curricula.”
“We’ve tried to incorporate global decision making into multiple courses and assignments,” says Dr. Berry. “For example, in one of our graduate-level economics courses, students must develop a business proposal for a make-believe venture in a country other than their own.”
The very nature of the University of Phoenix classroom experience lends itself well to learning about the diverse global business environment, according to Dr. Lindquist. “Sometimes in our online classrooms, one student will say or do something that would be considered a faux pas in a fellow student’s country or culture,” he says. “Our students are very good about correcting and informing each other in a safe, peer-to-peer manner. While making a cultural faux pas in the real world could be toxic for an actual international business deal, giving our students a safe environment to make those mistakes and also to learn from one another helps create a global understanding of business.”
The same phenomenon occurs in the physical classroom at the University’s nationwide campuses, Dr. Lindquist asserts. “Because of our open enrollment requirements, we have a higher ratio of immigrant students than many traditional universities, which gives all of our classrooms a very international flavor.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Berry emphasizes that the global nature of University of Phoenix itself has helped shape the School of Business, especially when it comes to improving cultural sensitivity across curricula. “Some of our international students have helped inform us about what I like to call ‘small sensitivities,’” says Berry. “For example, our Canadian students have taught us about how Canadians find it offensive when we use a simple dollar sign ($) when referring to U.S. currency in textbooks instead of ‘USD.” Canada uses a dollar as its currency too, you see, so it’s a sensitive issue to them. We made changes based on that feedback.”
Some businesspeople might find making such a change trivial and unimportant, but Dr. Berry disagrees. “When it comes to succeeding in international business, it’s not the big things that make the difference. It’s the little things.”
