Wittenberg

Students in the major will also learn how a foreign language provides access to different insights, which Vanessa Plumly, assistant professor of German, recognizes there’s a need for.

“Success in the international business world is not merely contingent upon understanding how a business operates. It involves complex interactions across linguistic and cultural contexts that have to be deciphered in meaningful ways. The new international business major at Wittenberg requires language learning for precisely these reasons,” Plumly said.

Plumly noted that students who have graduated with a language degree are now working in the international business field because of their transferable skills to companies who need communicators and critical thinkers.

“The newly established international business major allows us to combine the curricular goals of the Department of Business with those of the Department of World Languages & Cultures, among many others in this interdisciplinary major, to demonstrate how and why thinking across areas of study can make students more innovative and appealing to companies with business hubs around the world,” she said.

The university will host an International Business Networking Panel and International Business Major Launch event from 4 to 6 p.m. today in Bayley Auditorium inside the Barbara Deer Kuss Science Center.

Panel speakers will include Mark Grimes, class of 1981, treasurer with Sweet Manufacturing; Don Hutchinson, class of 2015, operations and sales manager with GKS Lifting and Moving; Cameron Snider, class of 1991, executive director of business development at Alliance for Multispecialty Research; and Madeline Imler, class of 2017, indirect procurement manager with Fairlife.

The event will have a brief introduction to the major and course plan and panelists will talk about their careers and companies before a question-and-answer session and a networking session.

Champaign County; MCKEEVER, Janice Clark County; BURKEPILE, Douglas Clark County; CARTWRIGHT, Betty Clark County; CASTLEBERRY, Carvey Clark County; HOWARD, Marguree Clark County; NESSELROTTE, Joyce Clark County; SMITH, Pamela

Clark County; WILLIAMS, Sarah

Out of Area; YOUNG, Bonnie

CONTRIBUTED Wittenberg University has added a major in international business to follow current trends and equip students to solve issues on a global scale. Here, students visited Dresden, Germany in spring semester of 2022.