International Business Minor

Students will discover and develop the entrepreneurial mindset that is critical to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment so that they will be able to imagine, create, identify, assess, and act on business opportunities in a variety of contexts and organizations. Through real-world examples and hand-ons activities, students will embrace an entrepreneurial and strength-based mindsets that will facilitate their understanding of the major functions of business and the relationships between them, as well as the importance of self-inquiry and teamwork.

Business decisions begin with a fundamental understanding of the marketplace. From target market to competition,globalization to industry analysis, businesses must evaluate the marketing, organizational management, and international implications of decision-making. Students explore the behavioral and business decision-making process for marketing and management as they are introduced to these strategic processes critical to business success. Students will learn how to build and function within successful teams as they engage with Vermont-based businesses to analyze and recommend solutions to real-world business challenges and opportunities.

This course will familiarize the student with the intricacies and special aspects of international marketing both for consumers and those within a business to business setting. Case studies will be used to allow for analysis of business problems and issues.

This course builds on COM 130, but with an emphasis on how to develop skills for communicating competently in an increasingly diverse society. Students will explore how culture is communicated verbally and non-verbally, and how to interpret and understand culturally-specific communicative practices. They will also learn how to establish, develop and manage relationships with culturally different peoples, and how to recognize and overcome cultural stereotypes and prejudices.

In the post-9/11 and globalization environment, awareness of the complex link between international politics and economics is crucial for determining relationships between states, and therefore, the domestic and international politics and business conducted among them. Combining historical context with contemporary case studies, students will learn key analytical concepts necessary in comparing different geopolitical systems (polarity, literalism, balance of power, etc.), and consider international actors’ (states, international organizations, and multinational corporations) incentives and interactions in the pursuit of individual or collective objectives and outcomes.