News

A week at Miami gives teens a taste of campus, business

News
22/06/2007 00:00
Case analysis. Team interaction. Marketing strategies. Public speaking. High school students who participate in Business Week at the Farmer School learn these and other skills.

The program, now in its tenth year, is part of Miami’s Multicultural Leadership Program that brings more than 100 rising juniors and seniors to campus each June for a week. The students’ afternoons are spent in division-specific programs, exploring possible majors and the career opportunities that can result.

This month, 23 of the MLP students chose to attend Business Week. The program, sponsored by Cardinal Health, presented the students with a case to work on and divided them into teams. Each team was given a Cardinal Health product to reposition and market. Afternoon sessions were a mixture of intense team research and planning sessions, preparation of reports, and power-point presentations. Finance faculty members Yvette Harman and Todd Bailey provided information and guidance.

“The Cardinal Health representatives told me that they were very impressed at the caliber of our Business Week students,” said Michelle Thomas, the Farmer School’s director of student organizations and development, who coordinated Business Week. “They commented especially about the insightful questions the students asked.”

The students also heard several presentations. Business law faculty member Todd Bailey spoke about business ethics; Jermaine Henderson, from Miami Intercollegiate Athletics, gave a powerful motivational talk; Rick Browne, from the university’s Career Exploration Center, administered the Myers-Briggs test to help the students see themselves in new ways; and finance faculty member Yvette Harman helped the students see what career paths their Myers-Briggs profile might suggest. Gerald Yearwood, of Miami’s Office of Career Services, provided more information about career planning.

The students who come to MLP are recruited from high schools in the Midwest targeted by Miami University, with an eye to increasing the diversity of the university’s applicant pool. Most of the participants are African American, Hispanic, and Asian.

“These are very high achieving students,” Thomas explained. “We bring them to campus to give them a taste of what college work – and college life – involves, and we very much hope they will apply to Miami and decide to enroll in the Farmer School.”

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