Cooper

Former students, faculty and friends of Cooper’s have committed to funding the endowment. Ray Hannigan ’61, an advocate of globalization of business education and recently retired member of the CIBS Advisory Council, made the initial contribution to honor Cooper for his contributions to CIBS. “He personally raised the level of awareness of international programs at A&M and was responsible for an innumerable number of Aggies getting exposure to working and studying abroad,” he says. “He was responsible for developing the vast network of ‘sister’ international programs with reputable universities throughout the world, and he made CIBS a leading CIBER in the United States.”

Gaspar said the fund was created to recognize and honor Cooper’s 23 years of service to Mays and CIBS, and his leadership and vision in boosting Mays Business School’s international programs.

“Kerry was instrumental in international business program design and development that benefited all Mays students – undergraduate, master’s and PhD – and also for identifying and generating resources that have set CIBS on a strong financial footing,” Gaspar says. He recalls that when Cooper received the 2011 Texas A&M University Bush Excellence Award for Faculty in International Public Service, he donated his $2,500 award to CIBS to support its international mission.

Mays Dean Jerry Strawser echoed Gaspar’s comments. “Kerry’s vision and hard work is responsible for many of our students having their very first international experience. These experiences are an irreplaceable component of Mays’ mission to prepare leaders for a global society.”

About Mays Business School

Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School educates more than 5,000 undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students in accounting, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and supply chain management. Mays consistently ranks among the top public business schools in the country for its undergraduate and MBA programs, and for faculty research. Its mission is to create knowledge and develop ethical leaders for a global society.

“India is gonna be a superpower soon,” says Katie Keech ’13, a sophomore business and management major at Texas A&M, in a recent interview in the Deccan Herald about her international field trip to Bangalore and Mysore, India.

Mays students at Reid & Taylor (India) Ltd.

Students were invited to participate in a two-week study abroad program in early January. Julian Gaspar, director of the Center for International Business Studies, conducted the trip in which students traveled to major business centers in southern India.

These Aggies blogged from overseas about visiting Cisco’s new $50 million campus in Bangalore, marveling at the center’s shockingly innovative technology.

“My favorite was the video conferencing room,” says Laura Stoma ’12, a junior accounting major. “Supposedly Mays has one of these systems, too.”

The group also visited the SDMIMD Institute in Mysore, and Infosys, where they dined in a floating restaurant and visited a training center that seemed to Kathryn Tears ’12, a junior accounting major, like “a mix between the Capitol Building and the Vatican.”

The Aggies took corporate field trips to Reid and Taylor and SPI, two companies whose retail work overseas has reached global proportions—“including Macy’s,” says Tears, “one of my favorites!”

Luckily, the trip wasn’t all work. They kept themselves busy and their heart rates up by scaling hundreds of stairs at the temple in Shravanabelagola, making mad dashes dodging traffic in Bangalore and riding elephants at the palace in Mysore.

In addition to studying Indian business practices, the students also found time to explore the culture of their host country.

The students enjoyed a little taste of home when they needed it most, too. After days of sampling exotic local cuisine, the president of Cisco in Bangalore hosted the Aggies at his house for dinner that was, according to Stoma, “more American than Indian,” giving their taste buds a break from the country’s rich spices.

This is only one of many examples of the compassion and hospitality that the Aggies received on their journey overseas.

“Everyone in India was so helpful and willing to give,” Tears posted. “For a group of people that in general does not have a lot of resources with which to give, their willingness to give everything they had, to a foreign stranger no less, touched me.”

Students also took note of the quiet dignity the people of India possess. Akin to our own Aggie pride, the citizens they encountered overseas did not boast about their own compassion and development, but rather leapt at the chance to share it with their new foreign friends.

“India is growing. India is awake. India is finally standing up for itself,” says Tears. “It has the energy and drive and the determination to make something of itself.”

Upon their return, each student will submit a 10-page research paper on a specific aspect of India’s business/cultural environment and make a presentation to the group in April.

“India is not for the faint of heart or the weak. If you want an adventure, go!” Tears urges, “but remember, do not pet the monkeys, or you will get rabies!”

To read more about the students’ trip overseas, visit their blog at maysblogs.tamu.edu/india.

Retailing is dynamic, shifting as quickly as new technology creates new platforms, supply chains, and business models for selling everything from toilet paper to cars. Exploring such innovation in retail was the goal of the Thought Leadership Conference, held January 28 and 29 at Mays Business School. The event, which brought together 31 academic experts and senior retailing executives from the U.S. and other countries, was hosted by Mays’ Department of Marketing and Center for Retailing Studies.

The event was sponsored in part by the Center for International Business Studies at Mays, the Marketing Science Institute, and the American Marketing Association. Mays Professors of Marketing Manjit Yadav and Venky Shankar were conference co-chairs.

Social media: The game changer

Social media is revolutionizing retail, says Gary Kusin, a senior advisor at TPG and former CEO of FedEx/ Kinko’s. Kusin presented the keynote address at the start of the conference, presenting on an apt topic, as nearly every other presentation at the event had a social media component.

Our increasingly digitally connected society impacts retailing more than it does any other industry, says Kusin, as people’s consumption patterns and expectations are changing. No longer are television commercials the gold standard for advertising. In fact, consumers indicate that they are much more likely to trust product recommendations from friends or other consumers—even those they haven’t met—than they are traditional advertising. This necessitates a shift in the way retailers engage their audiences.

TPG senior advisor and former CEO of Fedex/Kinko’s Gary Kusin told attendees that social media was too valuable and widely used by consumers for retailers to ignore.

According to Kusin, social media presents an awesome opportunity for the kind of involvement consumers are looking for. Your brand IS being talked about, whether you’re a part of the conversation or not, he says. Thanks to innovations like Google Sidewiki, where any user can contribute information to any website, more and more it will be the consumers that control a brand image, not the corporation. Consumers want to be heard, not shouted at, says Kusin. They will patronize the company that listens.

Retailers that choose not to enter the social media conversation are missing the opportunity to engage their consumers where they are most interested. This platform gives a retailer a channel for providing customer service in a way that’s instant and public; building rapport and enthusiasm among customers; correcting misinformation; and gathering new ideas and feedback from those who know your products and are using them. It’s too valuable and ubiquitous a tool not to use it, says Kusin. Even the Pope is making use of social media, with his own iPhone app, Facebook and Twitter accounts, and Youtube channel. Of the top 10 most visited sites in 2009, four were social—five, if you count Craigslist.

This shift in expectations has changed retail from an environment of create > advertise > sell, to one where retailers listen > interact > react > then sell, says Kusin.

One challenge social media presents is metrics. No one has yet determined the formula for how much one follower, fan, or comment thread is worth, so when examining social media through a budgetary lens, its impact is difficult to quantify. Whatever the dollars and cents ROI turns out to be, Kusin says it’s easy to see that the retailers that are on the forefront of social media, such as Best Buy, are the ones that are succeeding in the marketplace.

Further Research

The purpose of the Though Leadership Conference was to identify new areas for research based on recent innovations in retail. Attendees were broken into six groups and assigned a specific area of retailing to explore, including global retailing, supply chain, and assortment.

The 2010 Thought Leadership Conference brought together 31 academic experts and senior retailing executives from the U.S. and around the world.

At the conclusion of the conference, each group of scholars and retail practitioners presented their thoughts on the future of retail and identified areas for future research in retailing innovation. Will facial recognition software and digital messages such as “shelf-talkers” and monitors within a store (think Wal-Mart) stream more highly targeted ads to shoppers? How could retailers best manage how customers share promotional codes via websites like Myretailcodes.com? How can retailers create a more seamless customer experience through multiple channels? Which new platforms or business models have the potential to radically alter the way retail is done?

Over the next few months, conference groups will continue to explore these questions while drafting papers to be published in a special issue of Journal of Retailing, to be published in 2011.

These will be among the questions discussed at the second annual Thought Leadership Conference, hosted by the Center for Retailing Studies, the Department of Marketing, and Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.

This exclusive, invitation-only event will welcome 31 academic experts and senior retailing executives from the U.S. and other countries, January 27-29. Attendees will work in teams to explore a variety of topics in retailing and marketing strategy, then will present their ideas and recommendations at the conclusion of the conference.

To maximize the conference’s impact, papers and findings based on the conference deliberations will be disseminated in a variety of formats, including a special issue of the Journal of Retailing.

Building on the theme “Innovations in Retail: Emerging Issues and Future Outlook,” topics to be covered include innovation in the following areas: retail business models, retail channels and supply chain management, retail assortment and store brands, retail shopper marketing, retail price promotions, and global retailing.

Gary Kusin, former president and CEO of Kinkos/FedEx, will present a keynote address to kick off the conference.

The first Thought Leadership Conference on the theme “Marketing in a Multichannel, Multimedia Retailing Environment,” held last year, was a huge success, says Venky Shankar, professor of marketing at Mays, as it attracted top minds in retail and resulted in a special issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing. Cheryl Bridges, director of the Center for Retailing Studies, echoed that sentiment saying, “This conference uniquely brings together industry and university experts, positioning the center and Mays as leading contributors in retailing research.”

The 2010 event is also sponsored in part by the Center for International Business Studies at Mays, the Marketing Science Institute, and the American Marketing Association. Shankar and fellow Mays Professor of Marketing Manjit Yadav will serve as conference co-chairs.

For more information, contact the Center for Retailing Studies at (979) 845-0325, or visit http://www.crstamu.org/conference.php.

Wolken

Lawrence Wolken, a clinical professor in the Mays finance department, was recently appointed to the State Board of Education’s Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) review committee for social studies. Wolken joined the high school economics committee in Austin earlier this month to make recommendations concerning the basic economic and personal financial literary concepts that must be covered in the economics course taken by every high school student in Texas. The committee also reviewed the economics components included in other high school social studies courses.

According to Wolken, the TEKS high school committees will meet in April with the K-8 committees to coordinate the building aspect of the learning process through the entire 12-year education experience. Wolken and other committee members will work with K-8 groups at each grade level on the economic strand of their social studies curriculum, and the recommendations that they make will be presented to the State Board of Education next fall. “The TEKS the board adopts will influence the course content of K-12 social studies textbooks used not only in Texas but also nationally,” says Wolken.

“Looking to the future, the TEKS will determine what millions of future Texas residents and leaders will learn about economics/finance/business while attending the state’s K-12 public schools,” he said. “For those who do not continue on to college, this will likely be all they learn about these important subjects. That is an important responsibility that weighs on the mind of each member of the committee.”

Wolken’s appointment to this important committee is due not only to his extensive knowledge in economics and finance, but also to his many years of work with K-12 social studies teachers and students. Wolken’s work has received national attention thanks to the development of his Scholastic Assistance for Global Education (SAGE) program, which works with the Center for International Business Studies at Mays to provide resources that enrich classroom discussions at all grade levels.

It’s an undisputed fact that “the nature of our economy is that almost anyone in a business career is going to be involved in global business,” says Kerry Cooper, executive director of the Center for International Business Studies (CIBS) at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School. “Internationalism is important to all of [our students]. Whatever your major, you’re going to be interacting with people from other countries. You may not live abroad as part of your job, but you’re certainly going to be traveling abroad. That’s part of almost all business careers.”

So, to help prepare A&M students and faculty–as well as educators and business people across the nation–for careers in the global marketplace, CIBS stands ready with information and programs designed to enhance understanding of business in the 21st century.

A CIBS success story

Take Brittany Caudle for example. Raised on a ranch in west Texas, her international exposure was minimal until she went to college. After her junior year as an accounting major at Mays, Caudle participated in a study abroad trip to Strasbourg, France. “It was an eye opener,” she said. “I got to experience several different countries…I now have a much better idea of what is going on in Europe.”

Once this small-town girl’s horizons had been broadened, there was no going back. Soon after her return to the states, she jumped at the opportunity to intern with Deloitte’s New York office. The city made a big impression on Caudle and she made a big impression on Deloitte: she graduates this August and will return to NYC where she has accepted a full-time position with Deloitte as an international tax accountant. She is already looking to the future with that company. “Deloitte has a program that after you’ve been there two years you can do an exchange for two years in another country, which I definitely want to do,” she said.

“Significant overseas experience” is an integral component of the curriculum for CIBS’ certificates in global business.

Caudle’s story is the perfect example of what CIBS is striving for, says Cooper. “The most important part for our students is that when they graduate they’ve been exposed to global business and they’ve learned the importance of being able to build relationships with people from different countries and different cultures.” However, knowing how to get along with diverse people isn’t enough; Cooper also stressed the need for students to learn about the environment of international business and understand the international dimension of their “functional” area of business, such as accounting or finance.

CIBS offers certificates (similar to a minor) in global business, Latin American business, and European business. About 200 Mays students graduate with one of these certificates each year. Each certificate program has specific coursework inside and outside the business school (such as language classes) and also requires a “significant overseas experience,” such as internships, study abroad trips, or total immersion through a reciprocal exchange program.

International travel: big adventure, big benefits

Cooper says reciprocal exchange is the best way for students to experience another culture. It’s a simple arrangement: The student at A&M pays tuition just as she normally would, then trades places for a semester with another student at a partner school. They each are responsible for travel and living expenses, but there is no additional cost for tuition or fees. Participating students typically live with a host family or in a residence hall, surrounded by people from that culture. “All the students that have done a reciprocal exchange have had a phenomenal experience. We have never had one that wasn’t satisfied,” said Cooper. Students can choose from a menu of 31 partner schools, from cities in Ecuador to Singapore, all offering business courses in English. Courses taken at the partner school count toward an A&M degree.

Each summer, Mays sends about 200 students to Strasbourg and Barcelona (pictured above).

An added benefit for this program is the scholarship money available. “I’m willing to say that for any Mays student that wants to be a reciprocal exchange student, we will find the financial means for him or her to do it,” said Cooper, crediting the availability of such support to financial gifts from former students.

Another option for Mays students is the faculty-led experience, which takes a group of Mays students to a foreign locale for a summer business and culture course. There is time for travel as well as class work and visits to local business firms. To enhance the cultural immersion, the classes are taught in conjunction with a professor from that city and local students take the course as well. Each summer, Mays sends about 200 students to campuses in Strasbourg and Barcelona, on a multi-country marketing tour of Europe, and to other locations as there is interest from faculty and students. Next year CIBS plans to add a location in China.

When it comes to internships, CIBS does not secure positions for students, but does facilitate the internship search process by providing information. While paid international internships are very hard to come by, unpaid internships can be highly valuable for students, and CIBS can help defray the cost.

“We don’t arrange their internships, but we do provide scholarship support for internships as well as for study abroad,” said Karen Burke, assistant director of CIBS, who estimated they award $25,000 per year for international study.

Outreach going far beyond Texas

When CIBS was founded in 1985 it was one of the few centers of its kind in the nation. In 1990 it received the added distinction of being selected through a national competition conducted by the U.S. Department of Education to become a federally funded Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER). This designation grants the program $1.3 million every four years to create programs that benefit not just Texas A&M, but the entire nation. Mays is one of 31 business schools to have CIBER status.

Part of the CIBER funding is used to support international business research conducted by Mays faculty. “International business research is often more expensive in regard to gathering data and other costs, so being able to provide support is important,” said Cooper. Mays students benefit from faculty doing this type of research, as having internationally savvy professors who give a global perspective to course material is invaluable.

There are also resources for elementary and secondary school educators as CIBS helps to maintain the nationwide SAGE program (Scholastic Assistance for Global Education). Originally funded with a grant from Bank of America, SAGE provides web resources for teachers in K-12 classrooms that want to include international perspectives in their curricula.

CIBER isn’t just about the academics, though. Kelly Murphrey, director of outreach for CIBS, works with small business owners in the U.S. that want to globalize their businesses . Murphrey has worked in conjunction with the small business advocacy group NASBITE International and other CIBER schools to develop a national credential, the NASBITE Certified Global Business Professional, to recognize the unique knowledge and skills required by global business professionals.

Hosting conferences for discussion of ideas regarding international trade is also a part of the CIBER mandate. Most recently, CIBS organized a border trade summit held in Windsor, Ontario, which brought together politicians, academics, and business people to discuss the economic impact of the hardening of the U.S./Canada border since September 11, 2001. Cooper says the next such conference will likely be about NAFTA, and will examine 15 years of research about the effectiveness of that program.

The biggest challenge

“Our biggest challenge really is getting the word out to people,” said Cooper. “A lot of our students arrive on campus knowing little about international business, not realizing how important it is and believing things that aren’t true. They often think that international business means you must master multiple foreign languages and live abroad for long periods of time. So we have to disabuse them of the things they believe that aren’t true and then teach them what is true.” Cooper and Burke agree that the best marketing tool for CIBS is word-of mouth from students that have participated in the programs and return to Mays excited about their experience.

Burke says that at freshman conferences in the past few years, students are showing much more interest in what CIBS does. “And the parents are very interested in them gaining experience in international business, and that’s a change,” she says.

“I think our job will get easier as more and more of the students that arrive here will be excited about what we have to offer,” Cooper added. “Our role is to make them aware of what is available at Mays, and the importance of taking advantage of these opportunities.”

The Homeland Security and Canada-U.S. Border Trade: Implications for Public Policy and Business Strategy conference was hosted in part by the Center for International Business Studies at Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. About 120 business executives, government officials, and academics attended the conference, which was held in Windsor, Ontario in October 2007.

The presenters discussed the challenges of keeping the world’s longest undefended border open to trade but closed to terrorists. The goal of the conference was creating greater cooperation between nations, and fully engaging people in the public and private sectors in security efforts, constructive policy action, and meaningful research.

For more information about the conference, please visit the website http://cibs.tamu.edu/border. You can also contact Kerry Cooper at kcooper@mays.tamu.edu.

How can the movers and shakers in international trade demonstrate their expertise? Before 2005, they might have only been able to point to experience in the field. But a new Global Business Professional credential developed by NASBITE International is changing the way business people evaluate a person’s international business knowledge.

Texas A&M’s Center for International Business Education and Research at Mays Business School has been strategically involved in a rigorous process to create the NASBITE Certified Global Business Professional credential—the first of its kind in the U.S. To become NASBITE CGBP certified, trade advisors, executives and students must pass an exam that covers international management, logistics, marketing and finance.

More than 100 people have taken the exam—from a broad array of backgrounds including engineering, agriculture, business and international studies—since it first debuted in March 2005 as the new standard for competency in global commerce.

“This credential certifies that you have a fundamental understanding of international trade and business,” says Kelly Jett Murphrey, director of the Center for the Study of Western Hemispheric Trade housed at Mays.

Murphrey is past president of NASBITE International and a member of its executive committee who has been actively working to develop the credential since 2000.  “In the international arena, there has not been a formal way to judge a person’s international business competency. This provides a way, and we are already seeing a growing interest to hire certified people in companies and in the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Agriculture.”

Academic and continuing education courses with content aligned with the NASBITE credential are emerging at universities across the country. Murphrey is one of those now crafting training materials: he’s developing four Web-based continuing education prep-courses for the global professional exam.

To learn more about the credential, visit http://cibs.tamu.edu/outreach/certificate.htm.

Finance professor and assistant department head Larry Wolken spent a month in Egypt this summer on a Fulbright Study Tour that immersed a group of Texas educators in the culture and practices of the developing Middle Eastern country. Floating in former trading boats along the Nile that are now mainly used for tourism, Wolken watched as farmers carried harvests home on water buffalo and observed the desert creeping up to the shore of the world’s longest river.

Dispelling the mystique of a foreign nation and exposing its underlying cultural, social and economic structures is key to educating the students and future business leaders of tomorrow, Wolken says. And being present to actually witness the world firsthand, he says, is far more precious a tool for this lifelong educator than reading about it in a book.

“Other than the fact that there are Arabic signs and people dressed a little different, these people are the same as Americans,” Wolken explains. “They have the same concerns about family, about their jobs. They’re just dealing with a lot of different things than us in a different land with an enthralling history.”Wolken will apply much of what he’s learned about the reality of modern Egypt to the Scholastic Assistance in Global Education (SAGE) project he directs for Mays’ Center for International Business Studies. Social studies teachers from across Texas access http://sage.tamu.edu for course lesson plans and source materials that help them globalize their classrooms. The resources gathered at SAGE advance the quality and depth of education of Texas’ K-12 students.

Mays students also benefit from Wolken’s extensive experiences abroad in his international finance graduate and undergraduate courses. Though the courses focus on currency and exchange rates, Wolken — who has also traveled to Japan and had extensive visits to Russia and China, where he watched the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests — hopes a little reality rubs off on his students.

“Things are not as easy as they seem and you can’t just throw money at a developing country,” he says. “You need to get an understanding of the culture, economic and political system before you can suggest ways to improve and change it.”