A passport isn’t always required to open up a new world of understanding about complicated cultural issues. For example, Caroline Brettell, Dedman Family Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, led a spring break trip to New York’ Ellis Island and other historic sites as part of the Honors Cultural Formations course, “The Immigrant Experience.” SMU’s Richter Fellowship Program funded the class trip.
Other challenges, like the Lyle School of Engineering’s Immersive Design Experience (IDE), provide students with a taste of life after graduation. IDE will be an integral component of the Skunk Works® Innovation Gymnasium, part of the SMU/Lockheed Martin Skunk Works® Program, housed in the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education. TI Distinguished Chair for Engineering Education Delores Etter directs the Institute and the SMU program.
IDEs, which will be scheduled during semester breaks, will challenge small student teams to solve real-world problems on a compressed timeline. Students will work full time to design and build a prototype, and at the conclusion, will present their solutions to a panel of faculty and industry representatives.
The colorful parade of flags at the 2009 World Model United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Accountability to an important client – SMU – injects a healthy dose of reality into immersion projects at the Cox School of Business. In Practicum in Portfolio Management, two yearlong courses geared toward senior finance majors and second-year M.B.A.s, students manage part of the University’s endowment.
“We’re functioning like any other money manager, making real-time decisions for over $5 million of funds in the endowment,” says Brian Bruce, director of the ENCAP Investments & LCM Group Alternative Asset Management Center, who teaches the classes.
Students are assigned an economic sector to analyze and then make buy-and-sell recommendations to the class. The course culminates in a presentation to the SMU Board of Trustees Investment Committee.
“I believe that investing real money and seeing the consequences of our decisions was a great benefit,” says David Luttrell ’09, now a research analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “Particularly during the bear market times we experienced, I think we all learned a lot about the market, investor behavior, stock picking and lastly, humility.”
All immersion experiences push students to take what they’ve gleaned from books, lectures and research and use it in demanding situations.
Last spring’s World Model UN (World MUN), for example, was a head-first plunge into international diplomacy for the 10 SMU participants.
Senior political science major Nicola Muchnikoff, a member of SMU’s delegation at the 2009 conference in The Hague, “got so much from the experience that I couldn’t get any other way: public speaking skills, negotiation practice and dealing with language barriers.”
“Although the World MUN is a simulation, with students from 38 countries participating, the cultural and language issues are real,” says Chelsea Brown, a Tower Center for Political Studies postdoctoral fellow, who teaches an upper-division political science class that prepares students for the conference. An SMU group will attend the 2010 event in Taipei next spring.
Muchnikoff, the 2009-10 president of the World Model UN’s International Relations Council, adds, “It gave me the opportunity to apply things I’ve learned in many classes, especially those in human rights and political science.”
&ndash Patricia Ward
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