IME Asia General Press Release
The MBA degree is often touted as a life changing experience, but students from the Boston College Carroll School of Management who participated in the 2011 International Management Experience (IME) trip to Asia last month feel this more intensely than most.
Lecturer Prof. Gregory L. Stoller hosted the 11th annual IME Asia trip, along with Associate Professor Mary Ellen Carter, and with 24 MBA students traveled to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai and South Korea as part of their three-credit course. The journey spanned over two weeks and included visits to 13 big name companies including Hong Kong Disneyland, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Standard Chartered First Bank, Hyundai Card and the Puibright shoe factory in southern China. Carroll School students also got to hear first-hand from alumni on their experiences with doing business in Asia.
For MBA students the IME Asia program was a potentially career changing event. Mark Wasif ’12 is working toward a dual concentration in corporate finance and entrepreneurship. Although he grew up in and worked in Dubai before applying to graduate school, seeing the huge cultural differences between doing business in Asia and the West was “fascinating, intriguing and highly appealing," he says.
Eileen M. Holcomb ’12 has already traveled to 30 countries but the IME program made her see that she could enjoy working abroad long-term. She interns at the Bank of America this summer and is already researching their Asia-based offices. Holcomb has a concentration in corporate finance, and felt especially welcomed by Carroll School alumni during her trip. Twenty alumni in Hong Kong gave the group a special evening tour of the city and offered precious insight into how business is conducted there. "Getting the Boston College treatment outside of the US was very special," she says.
Stoller has worked and lived in Asia and speaks several Asian languages. He thinks that this year’s IME Asia program was perhaps the best he has hosted. "The company visits and alumni events were all fantastic. The alumni were interesting and ranged from people working in financial services to those running their family business. Our students learned more from this trip, because they went directly into the field, than they could likely ever gain from case studies about international business taught in a classroom,” he says.
The IME program was rigorous and entry is often competitive. Days were jam-packed with visits, country briefings and alumni briefings. There is some sightseeing scheduled in each city, [the group saw a floating market in Bangkok and the border between North and South Korea], but not a huge amount, Stoller admits. Now back in Boston, the students must write a five page research paper analyzing one of the companies visited, and outlining how precisely the IME Asia program helped their career prospects.
Holcomb isn't fazed by the workload; the program was entirely worth it. "I could move to Shanghai tomorrow," she sighs. "That city is magical."
Source: VisionPointMarketing
Lecturer Prof. Gregory L. Stoller hosted the 11th annual IME Asia trip, along with Associate Professor Mary Ellen Carter, and with 24 MBA students traveled to Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai and South Korea as part of their three-credit course. The journey spanned over two weeks and included visits to 13 big name companies including Hong Kong Disneyland, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Standard Chartered First Bank, Hyundai Card and the Puibright shoe factory in southern China. Carroll School students also got to hear first-hand from alumni on their experiences with doing business in Asia.
For MBA students the IME Asia program was a potentially career changing event. Mark Wasif ’12 is working toward a dual concentration in corporate finance and entrepreneurship. Although he grew up in and worked in Dubai before applying to graduate school, seeing the huge cultural differences between doing business in Asia and the West was “fascinating, intriguing and highly appealing," he says.
Eileen M. Holcomb ’12 has already traveled to 30 countries but the IME program made her see that she could enjoy working abroad long-term. She interns at the Bank of America this summer and is already researching their Asia-based offices. Holcomb has a concentration in corporate finance, and felt especially welcomed by Carroll School alumni during her trip. Twenty alumni in Hong Kong gave the group a special evening tour of the city and offered precious insight into how business is conducted there. "Getting the Boston College treatment outside of the US was very special," she says.
Stoller has worked and lived in Asia and speaks several Asian languages. He thinks that this year’s IME Asia program was perhaps the best he has hosted. "The company visits and alumni events were all fantastic. The alumni were interesting and ranged from people working in financial services to those running their family business. Our students learned more from this trip, because they went directly into the field, than they could likely ever gain from case studies about international business taught in a classroom,” he says.
The IME program was rigorous and entry is often competitive. Days were jam-packed with visits, country briefings and alumni briefings. There is some sightseeing scheduled in each city, [the group saw a floating market in Bangkok and the border between North and South Korea], but not a huge amount, Stoller admits. Now back in Boston, the students must write a five page research paper analyzing one of the companies visited, and outlining how precisely the IME Asia program helped their career prospects.
Holcomb isn't fazed by the workload; the program was entirely worth it. "I could move to Shanghai tomorrow," she sighs. "That city is magical."
Source: VisionPointMarketing