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Summerims take students around the worldSummerims take students around the world

Thunderbird students on a “Summerim” in France visited several large companies on the cutting edge of aerospace engineering and then got a behind-the-scenes look this month at the country’s much older wine industry. Overall, 226 students participating in 10 Summerim programs studied global business and made site visits in places such as Hungary, Japan, India and Panama.

“Summerims offer a phenomenal opportunity to not just observe, but to interact with international professionals who are operating in a global industry,” said Merix Cunningham, a student who visited France to study Management in the Toulouse Region, one of three new Summerim programs offered in 2009.

Cunningham said the 10-day program also provided an opportunity to experience a different cultural environment. “In our case, we were dealing with French companies, in a part of France that is not geared toward tourism,” she said. “Everything we experienced was truly French.”

The group in France, which included MBA and other graduate-level students, observed production operations of the A380 at Airbus and made other site visits in the aeronautical capital of Europe. The students also met a winery owner, who explained how the French have come to grips with ever-increasing global competition in the wine industry.

“I had a fantastic experience exploring a region of France I had never been in before,” Cunningham said. “It was also an intimate group of students, which also allowed us to get to know each other on a unique level and create lasting relationships.”

Thunderbird Summerims, which last from six to 12 days, offer students in-depth cultural experiences and personal interactions with corporate and political leaders. Students in the full-time MBA, Master of Arts in Global Affairs and Management, Master of Science in Global Management and Global MBA Latin America programs participate in the programs.

This year’s Summerims included trips to the United Kingdom, Hungary and Slovenia, Sweden and Estonia, Panama, Japan, and India. Besides the program in France, new Summerims included Global Institutions in Geneva and Place Marketing in Glendale.

“Summerims are extremely important for the Thunderbird experience,” said Christen Pechman, who participated in the Entrepreneurship in Developing Economics: Hungary and Slovenia. “Two intense weeks in a country focusing on a particular issue provides invaluable, hands-on experience that cannot be replicated in the classroom, and therefore, is a great compliment to the Thunderbird curriculum.”

Pechman and other students blogged throughout their trips on Thunderbird Student Voices, a new blog on Thunderbird’s Knowledge Network.

Thunderbird Professor Kishore Dash, Ph.D. led a group of Global MBA Latin America students on the Doing Business in Japan Summerim. The course exposed participants to the business landscape of Japan, the second-largest economy in the world. Highlights of the trip included guest speakers from the Japan External Trade Organization and the Mexican Embassy in Japan, as well as a walkthrough at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Thunderbird students also have an opportunity to go on Winterims, which follow the same format as Summerims but are held in January between the fall and spring trimesters. Students who complete a Winterim or Summerim study program receive three credit hours, and many of these programs satisfy Thunderbird’s global experience requirements.