Summer Business Institute in its Fifth Year

As she planned for her career, art education and photography major Sarah Carr ’08 had never dreamed she would spend a summer studying business skills. But bringing the insights of business to future artists, teachers, chemists and zooligists is exactly the mission of the Summer Business Institute (SBI).

Presented by the Farmer School of Business and now in its fifth successful year, SBI continues to challenge non-business majors such as Carr to shift their lens—just for a time—to gain a different perspective.

SBI director and professor of management, William (Rocky) Newman, shared what he believes are particularly long-term benefits of Miami’s program.

“It allows non-business majors to see how their interests and skills fit within a business organization, and helps them learn to function confidently in a business setting,” he said.

Carr agrees. “We are learning about leadership and organizational skills that will help when we are involved in any business,” she said.

The six-week program offers students a combination of class work, round-table discussions with area business professionals, and visits to companies in the region.

The final two weeks of the course include an international component for roughly half of the participants. This year, twenty SBI students followed in the footsteps of the 2007 students that traveled abroad to London—to work with dunnhumby, a multinational London-based UK market research firm with a U.S. headquarters in Cincinnati. This year’s class also traveled on for further study at dunnhumby’s Paris office. The 25 students that remained on the “home team” in Oxford studied market research from a U.S. perspective. Each team completes a “business simulation” for their final project.

Newman noted the advantage of the two-team international approach.

“The students were able to understand the distinction between European and U.S. markets, such as how corporations are supplied and how they operate differently for Europeans,” related Newman, “To better understand those differences, students are given the opportunity to view three separate areas of business: manufacturing, non-manufacturing and non-profit.”

Mass communication major Adam Rohletter ’08 expressed his appreciation for the range of topics covered within those areas.

“We’re learning everything from basic accounting principles to why individuals within an organization behave the way they do,” related Rohletter.

For communication major Clinton Mitchell ’08, the lessons learned at SBI will likely be put to use by summer’s end.

“After college I will be working for a business of some type, so I wanted to take something that would give me some practical knowledge that will be useful when I begin my career, said Mitchell.

Along with his classmates, zoology major Brad Backoff ’09 felt that the summer course was a productive investment.

Asked what he had learned as a student of SBI, Backoff replied, “Everything…A semester of class is summed up in every three-hour session.”

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