By Richie Johnson
With all the classes here at SVU, it’s hard to know what classes to take. Finding a class that not only meets expectations but exceeds them is a rarity. A class that exceeded my expectations was International Business (BUS 404), an integrated classroom experience that wasn’t the standard. This course, with the captivating content, the journey through International Business with Professor Todd Brotherson, emerges as one of my favorite classes taken here at SVU because of the academic knowledge and personal growth I experienced while enrolled.
In an integrated classroom, you end up doing a lot of the reading by yourself before class. This can be seen as an inconvenience but I assure you it was an advantage. We only had 7 students in this class so all of us needed to come prepared to share our thoughts. This helped us progress in our learning quickly and — because of this — we got through a lot more content and spent our time deeply dissecting the parts of business that we wanted to. It is crucial to note that we had a professor who had a ton of knowledge and genuinely cared for the students’ learning.
Another part of the curriculum that I enjoyed was that it wasn’t just a compilation of theories and concepts but a gateway to real-world applicability. One of our weekly assignments was to dissect a business article. I liked this because it kept me accountable to keep track of what was happening in the world every week. Our biggest assignment of the semester was a 3000-word research paper. For this assignment, we had to write about the foreign direct investment of any country and show why or why not it would be good for an investor to invest in. Although this was a massive assignment, I thought it was a good experience because you got to practice a pitch, just like you would in the business world.
The impact of this class extends far beyond the classroom. The takeaways I got from this class were all real-world applicable, from pitching an investment to staying familiar with the business terms that are used in practice. International Business is a great class to take. If you are an SVU student and want some relevant business experience I would highly recommend you take this class.
A Hidden Gem in the SVU Class Selection was originally published in The Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
