Georgian Court University

GCU’s Global Education Goes the Distance

On Oct 27, 2016

The distance between Lakewood and Bhutan, across 7,655 miles and three continents, narrowed in the spring of 2016 during Georgian Court University’s collaborative online international learning (COIL) project with Royal Thimphu College.

GCU students in BU321: Electronic Commerce, taught by Khendum Choden, Ph.D., a GCU assistant professor of business, worked synchronously and asynchronously with entrepreneurship students at Royal Thimphu College in the Himalayas. Their global goal: to explore business opportunity identification.

“Collaborating with their peers in Bhutan helped students engage different cultural perspectives and expand their multicultural competence,” said Jennifer Summerhays, GCU director of global education. “COIL will serve them well in life and in the workforce.”

RTC students shared business plans with their GCU partners, who then made recommendations. They suggested ways RTC students could use the Web to manage, market and provide an enhanced customer experience. Together, they were virtual business partners, and without passports or plane tickets, students had an international experience.

“We are enthusiastic about the potential of COIL,” said Dean Janice Warner, Ph.D., of the School of Business and Digital Media. “Globally networked courses intensify understanding of how business is conducted elsewhere in the world, and can serve as a gateway for our students.”

In June, Georgian Court MBA student Catharine Giotis (pictured above) took global learning to a new level: She joined a faculty-led study abroad program that took her to Beijing, Xi’an, Luoyang and Shanghai.

Ms. Giotis completed an independent study for her required international business class. Before going, she studied the implications of globalization for business in the United States and researched business differences between China and the US. She studied international trade agreements and the global capital market, and researched marketing differences. While in China, she was a keen observer, critically comparing her expectations to her experiences and reflecting further on how US businesses might thrive there.

“There are parts of the world from which we have much to learn,” she said. “I found China to be unlike any other when it comes to international business.”

Contact Info

900 Lakewood Ave., Lakewood, NJ 08701

732-987-2700
[email protected]
Georgian.edu

Janice Warner, Dean of the School of Business

 

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