FEATURED ARTICLE
Crummer’s Global Summer: Teaching, Consulting and Traveling
A trio of Crummer professors who spent their summers traveling the globe are now ready to share their perspectives with students this fall.
With Crummer’s commitment to developing global, responsible and innovative business leaders, many professors spent their summers traveling the world to broaden their global perspectives.
Crummer’s faculty members spanned more than a dozen countries and five continents this summer for the purposes of teaching students, consulting major companies, speaking on panels and generally broadening their business perspectives.
Crummer News talked with three faculty members about their journeys.
Dr. Mark Johnston’s Crosses the Pond with PMBAs
In late July, Dr. Johnston took the PMBA 57 cohort to Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna, Austria, for their cohort’s international experience.
The team of MBA students started their business experience in Budapest, where they began their course listening to a speaker deliver a “State of the Hungarian Economy” session, followed by a tour of Budapest, including Parliament.
The travel-based course in Budapest concluded with executive engagement activities with two global communication and advertising firms, Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett.
The next day, the cohort boarded an early morning coach to Gyor, Hungary where they got to visit the Audi Plant.
“The Audi Plant in Gyor, Hungary, was a highlight for many; it emphatically reinforced many of the principles the students had learned at Crummer including the importance of strategy, operations management, environmental issues, and finance,” said Dr. Johnston.
Dr. Johnston said the students got to witness the efficient production system used by Audi that is very forward-thinking on their environmental impact.
“The company is very focused on building cars in a plant that is environmentally friendly,” he said.
The students finished their international course touring the City of Vienna and learning about Raiffesisen Bank International A.G.’s expansion into Eastern Europe, before finishing the trip up with a farewell dinner.
“The students expressed that much of the learning reinforced what they had learned at Crummer; at the same time, many indicated that they biggest learning takeaways were what they learned about themselves and their bonding with the students in their cohort,” said Dr. Johnston.
Dr. Mary Conway Dato-on’s Jetsetting Adventure
Just reading about Dr. Mary Conway Dato-on’s busy summer might make you tired!
The international business expert visited four continents herself over the course of the summer – Africa, Europe, North America, and finally Asia.
Dr. Conway Dato-on began the summer in South Africa, giving a community-based presentation on social entrepreneurship.
From there, she took off to Uganda and Rwanda with the Global Livingston Institute (GLI). The Global Livingston Institute educates students and community leaders on innovative approaches to international development. They empower awareness, collaboration, conversations and personal growth.
The purpose of that visit was to possibly provide more opportunities for Crummer students, including an internship opportunity.
Following a personal vacation to Ireland, Dr. Conway Dato-on headed back to the North American continent, to present to professors at IPADE, Crummer’s partner business school in Mexico, during their faculty development workshop on research and academic publishing.
Dr. Conway Dato-on then spent two weeks in Kolkata, India, where she worked with the Global Links team.
The Global Links team in Kolkata, India, comprised of alums from the 2015 and 2017 Global Links cohorts, spoke to over 600 students from more than 10 universities, exposing them to the ideas of social entrepreneurship.
“This was an active extension of our mission here at Crummer,” said Dr. Conway Dato-on. “While we are currently working with 2019 Global Links Scholar, Dr. Denise Delboni in Sao Paula, Brazil, the Global Links Alumni Connect in 2019 builds on the amazing work of previous scholars. Two generations of changemakers and volunteers are now training the next generation of changemakers in Kolkata. The work in Kolkata is supported by the U.S. Consulate there while Global Links Brazil maintains the strong support from Tupperware Brands.”
She’s not done traveling yet. She recently returned from Glasgow, Scotland where she presented a research paper with Crummer alumna Gianna Hernandez ’19 MBA, at the International Social Innovation Research Conference.
The pair presented on Winter Park United Methodist Church’s efforts to alleviate multigenerational poverty in Kenya and how it relates to social entrepreneurship.
“Again, this is a complete activation of the Crummer mission. The paper represents students’ work in the classroom, converted to academic research, which is improving the way that INUA solves social problems in Kenya,” said Conway Dato-on.
Dr. Greg Marshall’s Expertise in Action
Dr. Greg Marshall, an authority on all things marketing and sales, visited Scotland this June for the Academy of Marketing Science’s World Marketing Conference.
Dr. Marshall, who serves as the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Marketing, served on the editor panel at the conference.
“It was a great dialogue and there were several other editors of other journals there. We ended up talking a lot about best practices on submitting articles for review and making an impact through academic publications. It was a very user-friendly group of editors and we had a large audience,” said Dr. Marshall.
The annual conference brings together marketers that are also professors from all over the world to share what they do.
“It’s a group that really enjoys getting together in a global setting,” said Dr. Marshall. “It was very nice to have Crummer represented there along with many of the best MBA schools in the world.
What he brings back to Crummer with him from these conferences like the World Marketing Conference is a fresh perspective.
“I really like getting the perspective of folks from schools that are outside the United States. We had people there from not just Europe, but all over the world. You bring back ideas and approaches that you can plug and play,” said Dr. Marshall.