UMaine Business School Dean Looks Overseas for Partnerships

Contact: Dan Innis, (207) 581-1968; George Manlove, (207) 581-3756

ORONO–University of Maine Business School students soon will have a few more opportunities for international field work, according to Dean Dan Innis, after his recent participation in Gov. John Baldacci’s trade mission to Europe.

Innis represented the University of Maine System as part of a delegation of about 30 Maine business representatives and state business development officials looking to foster better trade opportunities abroad. They visited Germany and Italy during the week-long trip in November.

Innis visited seven universities in five German or Italian cities, looking for exchange and research opportunities with other institutions and European businesses willing to accept UMaine business school students with overseas assignments.

“That was what I was pursuing most aggressively,” Innis says, “but I was also looking to find students there who might come to Maine to work with businesses.”

Recent revisions in the UMaine Master of Business Administration program require an international business experience, and undergraduates sometimes pursue foreign study projects, exchanges and internships, through the business school or the UMaine Office of International Programs.

“If we send 15 or 20 students to another country, they match with foreign students and break each group into four or five students, and each group goes to a company to solve a problem,” Innis says. Problems assigned to student groups traditionally are actual business dilemmas, Innis notes, and the solutions are usually implemented.

Innis visited universities in D