While most MBA students at Concordia University were spending their summers in air conditioned corporate offices, Shawna Rose was training Ugandan women how to run a better business, helping them with their confidence and consulting on small credit co-operatives.
"We provided them with basic business education—these women are entrepreneurs but most of them have maybe primary and secondary level education if any education at all," she says.
"We also developed a mentorship program for these women to coach them through running a business and dealing with the various issues that come about, and there are also some psychological, emotional issues, that they're not succeeding because of a lack of confidence or just in terms of male-female differences culturally."
Despite the number of university students in other disciplines who have been increasingly engaged and travelling in developing countries, Ms. Rose is a rarity for an MBA program. In fact, officials at various universities say Canadian MBA students tend to choose to work in world financial centres over their summer breaks.
"MBA students have different priorities," muses Jonathan Kaida, a UBC student who travelled to Kenya to teach business skills to local youth. He spent six weeks working in Kibera, a poor part of Nairobi. He was drawn to the Africa Initiative project at UBC's Sauder School of Business in part because of family ties to the continent.
Joanna Pedersen, a former high school teacher, went to Kenya with Mr. Kaida. She had travelled to Ghana 10 years ago and says now that she's got business skills, she feels like she can do more than she could with her undergraduate degree in Kinesiology.
"The shift in development is making an opportunity for MBAs to have a greater impact and to really use their skills," she says. "Going back with job experience, with the skills that I'm learning in the MBA, I feel like wow, I can actually do something tangible on the ground there, instead of just wanting to do something good. I feel I have skills that can be applied."
This is only the first year that MBA students have gone abroad with the Africa Initiative. A more popular way to spend time in other countries is through the schools' international exchange programs and through annual study tours that take students on intensive visits to financial centres in emerging regions.
"If we're talking about globalization, it's really a no brainer," agrees Gudrun Curri, a professor at Dalhousie University's School of Business Administration. "I have found that not too many Canadian students travel. Sometimes they don't even travel outside their own region."
However, when presented with an opportunity, it appears Canadian students are willing to take advantage of it. Ms. Curri developed a course that involves 16 hours of lectures, plus course readings, a two-week study tour to Eastern Europe, and a post-trip project to evaluate whether assigned Canadian companies should consider doing business there. For last year's trip to Poland and Hungary, 22 signed up out of a class of 60 students. Ms. Curri could only take 17.
The University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management has to turn away students from their international exchange program every year. Last year, 65 applied but only 27 were accepted, says Laura Wood, associate director of International Programs and Services for the school.
"The students who are curious to try studying overseas, they may have travelled before but they likely have not lived abroad before. It's sort of a taste to see if they would be happy living and working overseas post-graduation," says Ms. Wood, adding that it's also an opportunity to practice the language.
Participants all hope their travels will give them an extra edge in the job market, whether it's a boost on their resume or the connections that help them find a career after graduation.
"A large part of the MBA program is about the networks that you are able to create throughout the program," wrote Stefanie Schram, a Rotman student on exchange in Paris, France. "By participating in the exchange program as well as the International Study Tours, you gain access to a larger, more international network than others. This, in turn, opens up the set of job opportunities from North America to (in my case) Europe and the Middle East. It is more difficult to access these opportunities from Canada.
"In addition, I can leverage these experiences in interviews to demonstrate my knowledge of both international and emerging markets."
Ms. Schram also took advantage of one of Rotman's study tours—which include opportunities to visit to China, India the Middle East and, new for 2010, Latin America—to spend time in Dubai. The study tours include course work in advance of the trip.
Lance Dexter, a UBC MBA student, is in Toronto this week to interview for post-graduation jobs. But he's spending the semester studying in Brussels, Belgium. Mr. Dexter says even though he plans to come back to Canada to work, he'll still be able to use the skills and experience he gets in Europe.
"I think Toronto is a very multicultural city. Canada as a whole is very multicultural," Mr. Dexter says. "And I think just having a little bit more perspective, by living in a different country—just having a few months in Europe will certainly translate into helping me see things a little bit differently when I'm back in Canada."
Preeti Adhikary, another MBA student at UBC, is really enjoying her exchange to a university in Singapore. And she hopes it will better position her for a career once she graduates.
"You understand the culture better and learn the ability to adapt yourself to any situation [when studying abroad]. In today's global world, this is a valuable trait to have," she wrote in an email. "An individual joining the workforce has to be flexible and work in diverse teams and diverse locations. An exchange has provided me with a global outlook and this might be an edge over others. Being able to take chances and having the passion to learn new things is an attractive trait."
lpayton@embassymag.ca