UCO students travel to learn business practices
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Oklahoman’s David Dishman was one of the students who participated in a trip to Switzerland as part of his MBA studies at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Brandon Highfill knew the pursuit of a master’s degree would present many challenges necessary to advance his career.
Juggling work with school, making grades and graduating on time are some of that come to mind when a 28-year-old goes back to school at night, but for Highfill, his MBA program with the University of Central Oklahoma comes with another challenge — international travel.
Highfill had never set foot outside the country before an international immersion class in Switzerland as part of his graduate studies. He joined almost 30 other American students as they embarked on a weeklong trip to meet Swiss professionals, visit numerous Swiss businesses and learn alongside Swiss students at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts earlier this month.
It was a challenge for the first-time international traveler.
“It was very overwhelming, but in a positive way,” Highfill said. “Coming into an international airport was quite an experience. It was the first time I felt not just lost, but very confused. It was very difficult to feel comfortable even just reading directions.”
This challenge, alongside valuable international business lessons, are exactly what UCO Professor Dr. Geoff Willis intended his students to experience on the trip. Willis helped organize the curriculum for the trip, which included lectures on international steel tariffs, marketing strategies of an international pop star, service strategies from a luxury jewelry brand and more.
Willis is the assistant dean of curriculum and global activities for the College of Business at UCO. The trip to Switzerland is the fifth country visited by UCO MBA students under the current format, designed to expose students to different cultures and make them better global business leaders, according to Willis.
“At some point, as our students rise to positions of authority within companies they’ll likely be interfacing directly with people in different countries,” Willis said. “We can’t do anything without having some transaction across international borders.”
Willis has led student trips to China, Brazil, India and Thailand before the latest trip to Switzerland. A typical class includes 10 to 15 students, however that number was nearly double for the Lucerne immersion.
Swiss sophistication
UCO has partnerships with the university in Lucerne, but the nation’s business acumen was something Willis hoped would impress his students.
“Switzerland is one of the premier countries for doing business globally, so what I want to show is how sophisticated they are,” Willis said.
Students spent most mornings listening to guest lectures from various Swiss business professionals. In the afternoons, students visited local companies including a hotel and service management school, the Swiss technology company RUAG, and the Burgenstock Hotel and Alpine Spa — a popular European vacation destination where students explored the business aspects needed to operate such a facility.
These visits and lectures were also attended by Swiss graduate students who were taking part in a class led by Dr. Claus Schreier. The lectures and visits were in part intended to allow Swiss and American students to learn from each other, comparing business differences across cultures, throughout the Americans’ visit. These interactions were considered invaluable by U.S. student Julie Coughlan.
“I think it’s far more important to understand culture in a business setting, especially with our world becoming so global,” Coughlan said. “Being able to be in the environment with people from this culture or any culture and learning how they do business and how they interact ... is much more important to me in learning how to be a good business person in the United States than any course could ever teach me.”
Highfill, a hospitality professional, was particularly impressed with the visit to the hotel management school in Lucerne.
“OSU has a great hospitality school, and Lucerne has one that is recognized around the world, but we took a lot of the same classes,” Highfill said. “The big difference is the amount of apprenticeships or internships they had throughout their schooling, whereas we would do school straight through and have one internship your junior year into your senior year.
“They had jobs and internships along the way, which I believe is a better way of doing the program because a lot of the hospitality industry is the hands-on experience and learning,” Highfill said.
Highfill and Coughlan are only two of the returning U.S. students who will return to their jobs and careers having witnessed a bit of the world through an international point of view. The effects on the Oklahoma workforce might be hard to witness on the surface, but it has opened the eyes of Highfill. No longer a stranger to international travel, he brings back a perspective to the Sooner State that will make his professor proud.
“Being in Switzerland, they are so passionate about their craft. It shows in their service, their watches, their ranchers — they’ve perfected their craft and continue to do so,” Highfill said. “Seeing that, it just makes you want to put into place your own standards and ways of doing things (with) that excellence.”