The grades are in for the Fall semester, and now several classes are already planning field trips for the spring.  With the help of the career center and our donors, we will be able to organize a bus for the field trips to visit great sites. Hospitality students will be hosted by a downtown hotel and by a restaurant incubator.  Entrepreneurship students will visit North Shore businesses. And we hope to arrange more field trips.

Often the field trips lead to connections between the students and the hosts, leading to internships and possible jobs.  We’re proud that the interactions with managers often end with compliments for the SSU students – it gives us all a great boost to confidence!  It also solidifies the reputation of our students and the various programs of BSB. 

Your support helps make these field trips possible for more students, and we thank you!

Over the last few years, we have had one team win a local business case analysis competition, a few students attended a hospitality conference hosted by the Hospitality and Tourism Club of Harvard’s MBA, and we had a student competing in a UMass Lowell business idea competition.  These students had the courage to step out, and in the process they gained contact, knowledge, contacts and confidence that will help them now and in the future.  

Many conferences and competitions are available to business students. Some conferences invite undergraduates or graduates to present original research.  Some conferences are specialized in specific topics, like human resource management or hospitality or export/import business. Competitions include business case analysis contests and entrepreneurship ideas.  

So why don’t more students go to conferences and competitions?  One major reason is that students can’t afford to take a day off of work, and pay a registration fee on top of that.  If the Management Dept. can provide the registration fee, the students will be more likely to go and experience the reality beyond the classroom.  If past experiences hold true, the connections they make could lead to internships and careers.  But most important, the participants will come back to their classes with more confidence and motivation and insight.

Thank you for helping us send students to conferences and competitions.

We would like to get to $400 by the end of the weekend (Dec 6th) to stay on track with our goal for the month. I am hoping some of you will consider to make a gift of $225 to push us over the $400 mark!

We wanted to update you about types of #beyondtheclassroom initiatives at the management department. The students in management department visited Harbor Sweets, a successful business operation and had a chance to engage in question and answer with its president, Phyllis Leblanc, a successful businesswoman in the North Shore.