USF Asia Study Tour

The study tours have been approved for four different emphasis! The Graduate Programs Committee voted to have the restrictions suspended for the tours this semester (so that a course may have more than two emphasis).

The four emphasis are likely to be

1. Entrepreneurship
2. International Business
3. Management
4. Marketing

Came across an article on WSJ (Sept 16 issue) on getting cheap fares - see excerpt below.

When traveling from city to city overseas, it’s increasingly smart to shop for your tickets over there, too.

That used to be all but impossible. But in the past few years, a host of new Web sites have sprung up — as well as discount airlines from Europe to India to Singapore — that offer great deals if you know where to look.

Once you book your flight out of the U.S. (and for that, first check so-called consolidator sites and sites such as farecompare.com to sniff out good prices) you can generally stop bothering with U.S.-based travel sites — which typically don’t dig up the cheapest fares between cities abroad. Instead, you need to mine a variety of foreign travel sites as well as the sites run by the individual foreign airlines themselves. It’s worth the hassle: You can save hundreds of dollars on your next trip.

The first trick to finding the lowest fares: Know what airlines serve the cities you are interested in reaching. The site azworldairports.com provides links to hundreds of the world’s airports, where you will often find English pages listing the carriers serving that city. From there, you can search each carrier’s homepage for their fares.

Some relevant websites for this tour:

• Zuji.com - a Travelocity website based in Singapore
• Cathay Pacific - airline based in Hong Kong with their trademark All Asia Pass
• EVA Air - airline based in Taiwan with Web Specials to Asia from SF/LA
• Singapore Air - airline based in Singapore with "Best of the Web" Fare Specials

Have any to recommend?

The USF MBA program consists of 50 units of classes of which only 12 units are electives. These precious 12 units, or the equivalent of 4 classes, determine the emphasis you graduate with. Students are only allowed to take one other class not in their area of emphasis resulting in the current ‘Emphasis Crisis’.

A Comparison of MBA Curriculum with other Jesuit Universities on the West Coast

Loyola Marymount: *27 core units & 15 elective units (based on 3 units per class)

Santa Clara: 47 core units & 23 elective units

Seattle: 28 core units & 24 elective units

University of San Francisco: 38 core units & 12 elective units 

The crisis? Can this study tour count as any other emphasis besides International Business? The top three most popular emphasis in our program are Finance, Entrepreneurship and Marketing so for students who have already taken that one precious non-emphasis class, this study tour must count as part of their emphasis or they would have to give up taking this ~$4,250 course.

Professor Roger Chen will be presenting his case before the Graduate Programs Committee this Wednesday, September 20th. The outcome of the meeting will determine for some students whether this study tour is a feasible trip for them.

Wen and I offered to take the two KAIST exchange students out to dinner today because they missed having good Korean food (and it didn’t hurt that we love Korean food too). Unfortunately, only Albert made it because Jin was down sick.

We brought Albert to a Korean restaurant near campus and made him do the ordering - rice cake with vegetables, spicy pork with vegetables and kim chee chi gae. The kim chee chi gae turned out only ok (especially compared to the one we had here last week) but the rice cake and pork were very delicious and even gained Albert’s stamp of approval.

As we talked over dinner, I was shocked to learn that both the exchange students did not receive any help from USF administration on finding an apartment. In fact, neither knew about Orientation which could have helped them to meet new friends and get advice on what classes to sign up for. On the contrary, exchange students from the U.S. who attend KAIST are often assigned a local student mentor besides having guaranteed dormitory housing.
 
So what happened?

After spending a week searching for an apartment, Albert finally found a place that catered to students who came to the U.S. to learn English. The place, near Japantown, provides weekly and monthly leases with breakfast and dinner provided. Jin ended up staying at the same place after Albert told him about it.

Albert hastened to add that in spite of the initial bad experience, he’s been having a great time making new friends at USF. He also offered to take us around during those few days that we would be in Seoul for the study tour. For those of you who are interested in ever visiting Korea (with or without the study tour), Albert and Jin are only going to be here for this Fall semester before returning to KAIST to continue their program. Make sure you try to get to know them and help make their experience here a great one!

You can contact Albert at leehome1|at|gmail|dot|com. 

I was interested in the Asia Study Tour the minute I knew it existed because

1. I’ve never visited any of these cities
2. I hope to work in Asia again in the future

Unfortunately, due to some personal reasons, I could not take the trip back in January of 2006. In the meantime, I’ve only heard good things about the trip from the people who did (see 2006 USFAST Blog) and here are more unsolicited comments from previous USF student participants:

We, especially I, was able to learn insightful opinions from different fields from various talents. That might be the only chance in my life. I really feel so grateful of such precious opportunities.

The mixture of learning both within and outside the classroom was once-in-a-lifetime experience! 

This was an extremely worthwhile class! I would highly recommend it to my peers! 

I sincerely thank our two kind professors’ considerate arrangement and great support for us over the whole trip. 

I just want to thank you for all the efforts you put into organizing such a wonderful study tour for all of us. It was an incredible experience. 

Curious? 

Check out the Syllabus for more details and attend any one of the three information sessions!

Time: 5:15pm to 6pm

Venue: Malloy Hall Room 230

Dates: Tuesday Sep 5th, Wednesday Sep 6th, or Thursday Sep 7th