For its annual World Wide Week, MBS hosted ten international professors from its Foreign Partner Universities
This year MBS held its 12th World Wide Week, which honours the school’s international dimension and prepares Master students for their international exchange. For the first time, the school took a step further in its cultural and academic sharing by hosting on campus ten teachers from prestigious foreign partner universities.
The international teachers came specifically from India, Colombia, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the United States for this important week, and each offered a thematic course to our first-year Master Grande École students – in English, Spanish, German or Italian. The MBS Department of International Relations guided them during their stay in Montpellier and on campus, and they could not only meet our students, but also share with MBS teachers and discuss about their research areas.
An opening on new cultures
Among the ten international lecturer-researchers was Dr Farhana Sajjad, from the University of Surrey and Surrey Business School in the United Kingdom, who came to MBS for the first time to give a course on the subject of international retailing. “I really enjoyed my teaching experience at MBS,” Dr Sajjad noted. “The students were very attentive and receptive, and the city itself is also very sunny and beautiful, which is quite pleasant since I am from London! I enjoyed every part of this experience, and I’d definitely come back.” Ignacio von Putlitz, from Mexico’s ITESM (Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey), also came specially for this important week. “My experience at MBS was incredible. The school really gave us a very nice welcome, and the experience of teaching in a different language, in a different country, and even on a different continent, was extraordinary.”
A strengthened relation with foreign partner universities
All the courses offered during the week were about the discovery of a new culture with a focus on the business field. Ayoub Akil, a first-year student in the Master Grande Ecole programme, chose to take the course Economic Relations between South Africa and Europe & Gender, Sex and Power in Africa, offered by Dr Evert Knoesen from Rhodes University in South Africa: “I found the course really interesting – fascinating, actually. We got to share our opinions, which were sometimes different depending on our own culture of origin, and learn a lot about South Africa. I think there’s nothing better than learning about a country, its history, and evolution through the people who live there and speak passionately about it. This week has allowed us to discover a bit more about the world we live in, and to open ourselves up to it. It’s been a wonderful opportunity.”
Warm thanks to: Dr John Donnellan (New Jersey City University, USA), Dr Sonu Goyal (International Management Institute, India), Dr Farhana Sajjad (University of Surrey and Surrey Business School, United Kingdom), Ignacio Von Putlitz (ITESM, Mexico), Dr Geraldina Silveyra (ITESM, Mexico), Dr Evert Knoesen (Rhodes University, South Africa), Dr Michael K. Herold (Otto Friedrich Universität Bamberg, Germany), Jose Andres Areiza Padilla (Universidad Javeriana, Colombia), Dr Rajeev Anantaram (International Management Institute, India) and Silvia Vicentini (Uni Roma Tre, Italy).
