David Pyke's Blog

Not many students are on the USD campus during intersession

Not that I’m lonely or anything, but it has been pretty quiet around here during intersession. I’m glad our traveling students and faculty send me postcards from their travels and tell me about the projects they’re working on.

First, from our MBA and IMBA students:

One postcard is from Dubai, where 19 students are working on projects for 4 different companies. For example, at Dubai International Academic City the project is to identify potential investors, recommend marketing strategies and project financial feasibility for the development of multi-use facilities for students, staff and the community.

Another postcard is from 15 students working on 3 different projects for companies in Buenos Aires. One project is for Lanxess (how do you pronounce that?), a leading specialty chemicals company with nearly 17,000 employees in 31 countries. For the facility in Argentina, the project is to diagnose, from a strategic and operational viewpoint, the supply chain management process that the company uses for order fulfillment and customer satisfaction.

And the mail just keeps pouring in…from 23 students on 3 projects in Shanghai, and from two locations where we have partnered with other schools: 18 students on 3 projects in Delhi and 13 students on 3 projects in Rio de Janeiro. We’ve asked them to take lots of photos, so I’ll share those with you when the students return.

One exciting aspect of these projects is that our students are developing ideas and strategies that are being presented to the top management of the organizations. And, most importantly, we know from past years that the ideas are then adopted and implemented by these organizations.

Next, the postcards from our Undergraduate students:

We have undergraduate students doing 2 consulting projects in Shanghai for WD-40 and one project in Argentina for AAETAV, Argentina’s National Association of Adventure and Ecotourism. One student at AAETAV writes about the very point I was making above:

We met with the President, Carlos Pelli…Today was very productive and I think I speak for the group in saying that we are very excited to start a project that this organization will actually use and implement in their planning.