Authorized under Title VI, part b of the Higher Education Act

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

ABSTRACT

The KU CIBER seeks to continue its growth as a valued resource sought after by professionals, firms, and communities as they strive to become more competitive in the global business environment. It will provide pertinent information and facilitate the public-private partnerships critical to acting locally while competing globally. It will help to ensure a growing supply of new professionals capable of contributing to the global efforts of their organizations and to assure that current managers have the opportunity to learn new skills critical to their firms’ global success.

Based in a Midwestern university with a wealth of international resources and a business school committed to building professional skills on a liberal arts foundation, the KU CIBER is surrounded by a region linked to global markets through the provision of professional, transportation, and communication services. The KU CIBER aspires to be a model for interdisciplinary course development and a national resource for trade in services, important in their own right, but also crucial inputs into the production and trade of many goods. It draws on the expertise at KU of four federally funded National Resource Centers focusing on East Asia, Russia and East Europe, Latin America, and Africa, and a growing European Studies center, as well as faculty across the campus who have experience relevant to business in myriad countries and contexts.

Our CIBER is located in a region where support for international business is needed and has a great impact. The greater Kansas City area ranks 11^th nationally in exports; 65 percent of its business is international; and global trade accounts for nearly 25 percent of its GDP. The region is a vital and growing transportation hub, where major highways and railways running from north to south and east to west intersect. It is also home to major firms with international operations, such as Sprint, Hallmark, Black and Veatch (the nation’s 13^th largest engineering firm), American Century Investments, H&R Block, Kansas City Southern Industries (owner of the “NAFTA Railroad”), Yellow Corporation, and many others. These firms hire a large proportion of our graduates and many of their employees attend the part-time MBA program at our Kansas City campus. Some are represented on the CIBER Advisory Council; others are involved in the CIBER’s outreach activities, conferences, and executive education.

In this proposal, the KU CIBER seeks to extend its accomplishments of the 1999-02 grant cycle. We will continue our CIBER’s central focus on international trade in services, the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy. The nature of international trade in services demands extensive communication with buyers and the ability to interact easily with many different cultures. Hence, our CIBER pays heightened attention to issues of language, cross-cultural management, and ethics.

It is clear that the next CIBER cycle will correspond with a time of great national and international uncertainty. As world events continue to unfold, new strategies and techniques will need to be developed to help U.S. businesses continue to succeed internationally. Our CIBER has built flexibility and responsiveness into the proposed programs, so that we will be able to introduce projects and modules dealing with timely issues on an ongoing basis. Our proposal also includes remote delivery of IB education by electronic means, and research into experiential learning alternatives to study abroad, and we have the ability to expand these features if the need arises. The KU CIBER will help provide a conduit to make appropriate resources available to the business community as it copes with the changes in the global business environment.

Programs proposed for the 2002-2006 cycle are described below.

INTEGRATED IB/CLASSWORK EXPERIENCES

· Global Research Integrative Projects (4.1). This integrative capstone course will be the centerpiece of the newly revised MBA program starting in 2002. Interested MBA students will spend eight weeks studying an industry sector or company, including two weeks of site work outside the U.S.

· Trilateral master’s (1.3). Planning is under way and approvals are being sought for a new tri-continent, three-school master’s degree program to be taught in English at KU, Tongji University in Shanghai, and ACI Negocia in Paris. The degree awarded will be an M.S. in International Business from KU, with certificates from Tongji and Negocia.

· Experience Entrepreneurship Globally (1.2). This certificate program for would-be entrepreneurs will provide classroom instruction on entrepreneurship basics, and a two-week study abroad tour at recognized entrepreneurial sites, e.g., Hong Kong, Ahmedabad, India, northern Italy, and Aberdeen, Scotland.

· International E-learning (4.3). An on-line, Web-based version of the course, Business, Culture, and Society in Western Europe, will be developed and delivered to students participating in the program at KU’s Italy Campus.

· Joint MA/MBA (6.5). The KU CIBER has fostered the initiation of joint degrees with the NRCs in Latin America and Russia and East Europe. We will extend MA/MBA program to East Asia and Western Europe.

NEW AND EHANCED CLASSES

· Globalizing American Studies (4.2). The KU CIBER will work with the American Studies Program to develop a module on globalization for the introductory American Studies course, reaching over 400 students per year.

· New Required MBA IB Course (4.7). We will design and implement a new, one-credit IB course to be required of all full-time and part-time students in the MBA program.

· Visiting Faculty from Partner Institutions (4.5). Elective choices in IB will be expanded by hosting visiting professors from foreign universities with which we have on-going relationships.

· Study Abroad (6.2 & 6.3). Students will benefit from new study abroad programs in Brazil, Europe, and Japan. In addition, we will add a specialized study abroad program for accounting students. We will recruit from area universities so that their students may take advantage of these opportunities.

OTHER STUDENT ACTIVITIES

· International Leadership Forum for Students in Professional Schools (4.4). This speaker series will be co-sponsored with student organizations in Business, Engineering, and Law.

· Educational Linkages with Ecole Superieure de Commerce Clermont-Ferrand (4.6). At the request of ESC-Clermont, we will send a Ph.D. student to teach at Clermont each year, and will invite Clermont faculty to teach at KU.

· Internships (4.8). Foreign internships will be developed directly by CIBER and through collaboration with the student group AISEC; we will also seed internships in regional trade organizations.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE INITIATIVES

· Accelerated Portuguese for Business (2.1). Responding to regional and national needs, we will develop an accelerated language program to develop fluency in Portuguese and familiarity with the Brazilian business environment.

· Brazilian Studies Certificate (2.2). A related initiative will be development of a new certificate in Brazilian studies, to be offered to undergraduate Latin American Studies or Business majors.

· CIBER Teaching Internships in Foreign Business/Professional Language Training (2.3). The KU CIBER will provide compensation for Ph.D. students in foreign language programs to work with faculty members to deliver business/professional language courses. The interns will also receive CIBER support to attend appropriate business language workshops.

· Foreign Language Training for Graduate Business Students (2.4). Tutoring in several languages, including Chinese, Italian, and Japanese, will be offered to groups of students (also open to faculty) in conjunction with international study opportunities.

· German/Business Language Course (2.5). A new course, Introductory German for the Professional Schools, will benefit students whose class schedules make it difficult to take the traditional five-hour course.

· Sponsorship of business language conferences (2.6). Conferences sponsored will include the CIBER Conference on Language, Communication, and Global Management, and the Conference on Using Instructional Technology in Teaching Business Language.

NATIONAL SYMPOSIA (1.4)
The KU CIBER proposes two national symposia

· International Trade and Labor Standards, sponsored in collaboration with the Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at KU, will examine the rights and roles of labor and capital in the globalization process.

· NAFTA at Ten Years: A View from the Heartland, sponsored with the Dole Institute and the Center of Latin American Studies, will convene scholars, executives, and government representatives to examine the region’s experience with NAFTA at its tenth anniversary.

The best presentations from these symposia, and from the IB Ethics symposia described below, will be published in edited volumes.

IB ETHICS INITIATIVES

· National symposia (1.4). The KU and Thunderbird CIBERs will collaborate on the International Trade and Labor Standards Symposium described above and on other ethics symposia including one on IB ethics in the information age (2003-04) and one focusing on global efforts to reduce corruption in global transactions (2004-05).

· IB Ethics Workshop (5.3b). The IB Ethics workshop co-sponsored in Kansas City with Thunderbird and Sprint in April, 2001, will be offered in other locations, and a specialized IB ethics workshop will be developed for engineering professionals.

· Faculty Development in IB Ethics (1.6). We will extend our regional faculty development workshop on IB ethics to a national audience by offering it in conjunction with the Globalization Seminars organized by the Memphis CIBER.

· International Society for Business, Economics, and Ethics (6.4). Our CIBER will sponsor two faculty from KU or other institutions to attend this Society’s conference in 2004.
GLOBAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT INITIATIVES (1.1)
This collaborative Business-Engineering project aims to accelerate the creation of project managers that are able to work effectively in international setting, and to make U.S. engineering firms more competitive internationally. In 1999-02, we introduced graduate and undergraduate courses in global project management, including a study abroad experience. For 2002-06 we will create:

· a module on international aspects of project management, to be embedded in existing professional education programs;

· a global project management program for young managers;

· an executive education program for project managers moving into leadership roles;

· a Council of Presidents of global engineering and construction firms located within the region, to advise the CIBER on the development of these programs.