Last Monday, Global Sales Director of PepsiCo John Charles Jove posed the following question to the 15 students assembled in a lecture hall in Remsen:
"What is globalization?"
There was a silence for a minute and then one student raised his hand and explained that in the globalization course, he had learned about so many aspects of globalization that it was difficult to explain it with a short answer.
Globalization, a course taught by Professor Waleed Hazbun, run through the Career Center and sponsored by the Second Decade Society, is part of the experiential learning classes offered during intersession. The class provided students with the opportunity to learn not only about globalization and its effects, but to meet the actual people involved in international business, politics, and law. During the first week of the course, speakers lectured each day, and during the second week, the class traveled to New York for two days.
The IR and political science majors, who comprised the majority of the Globalization class, were provided with a rare chance to engage in dialogue with the people whose actions and organizations they learned about in classes such as Contemporary International Politics and Introduction to Political Economy. The course provided different perspectives on globalization and also pushed students to begin seriously thinking about their future careers.
"The course differed from regular courses because it is one thing to learn from professors and another thing to learn from people in the field," said sophomore Jess Beaton.
Sophomore Stephanie Hausner, who took another experiential learning course on financial literacy, agreed. "We spent two weeks at Hopkins learning about the field from alumni, then we were given the opportunity to go to New York City to put what we learned to use. Through information sessions, tours and alumni receptions we all walked away with a much better understanding than before and a sense of future career options."
Each lecture given to the class at Hopkins showed the range of theories and opinions on globalization. The lectures ranged from Professor Peter Marber's lecture about the practicality of globalization and what it means to live in a globalized world to Professor Kellee S. Tsai's speech about private sector finance in China.
From the outet, the experiential learning classes have emphasized the possibility of finding a potential internship. Even before the class began, students were asked to submit a resume and given a list of appropriate business attire to wear during the New York trip. The combination of learning and career preparation seemed suitable to students at Hopkins, many of whom seem to be certain of their career paths.
However, even though the class gave students a chance to meet influential players in the international system and engage in networking, students rarely found an internship as a result of the trip. This was in part because many of the organizations are looking for interns who have completed their junior year or have graduated. "This was the biggest fault of the trip," said Beaton.
Other students did not like the varied lecturers and the amount of work given during the course. "We had a lot more work to do in comparison to the other intersession classes. Additionally, although the guest speakers were good, it felt like there were too many. I mean, we only had 2 classes where our professor actually lectured. We lost the base foundation of knowledge, which made the guest lectures feel slightly detached or isolated from the course," said sophomore Mike Mueller, who took the class last year.
Despite this, the class gave students an opportunity to begin to narrow down their future career options. During the two days spent in New York, students got to meet with a variety of Hopkins alumni involved in international affairs. These included W. Jeffery Lawrence of the international firm Shearman and Sterling, Lex Malas, the managing director of energy, power and capital markets at Goldman Sachs, H.R.H Prince Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, the Jordanian Ambassador to the UN and Harold Gessner, the executive producer of CBS News, as well as many others.
"The trip to New York City was great in that we got to see Hopkins alumni and how they got to where they are, and it helped to narrow down my career interests," said sophomore Justin Lee. In New York, the presentations given at various law firms, investment banks, news stations and the UN addressed not only the jobs of the various presenters, but their various career paths and their role in the global system.
