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Students bubble with enthusiasm for Paris study abroad.
The most recent study-abroad trip to Paris included visits to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, Café Angelina (a favorite haunt of author Marcel Proust), and Notre Dame Cathedral. Along with seeing the sights and undertaking a full complement of coursework, the short trips always bring students into contact with a local business or two. This time, the visits were extremely tasty: one to Piper-Heidsieck and the other to Moët & Chandon, both internationally-acclaimed champagne makers. 
One of the 23 participants, Jaclyn Marron, a finance major who will graduate in May, 2006, and who has been on other study abroad trips, such as the one to Rome, enjoyed the group interactions during the trip, which lasted from March 17 through March 26, 2006. “You get to know new people, you work together, you hang out together, and you depend on each other,” she said. “There’s more fun in groups because you are sharing new ideas and perspectives. This was especially true at the Louvre, where we got others’ views about the art we were seeing.” Offered through the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), the trips are organized and led by J. Randall Martin, a member of the Management and International Business Department in the college and coordinator of its study-abroad programs. The trips are all based on the idea that learning about other cultures while living in them deepens the academic experience for international business students. This was the sixth study-abroad group he took to Paris. Barbara Peres (BBA ’04), currently a master of international business (MIB) student and communications coordinator for the university’s technology services (UTS)-Customer Relations and Communications, served as a teaching assistant to Martin. She helped with logistics, such as organizing the hotels and transportation, and took several students on a side trip to London. As a management and international business major, she previously had participated in study-abroad courses in Paris and Rome. “The trips are excellent for any business student since every company today is seeking employees with an international background,” she said. “For example, international business students see globalization at work, underscoring what they are learning in class, while students taking finance courses get to see how transactions take place within different cultures.” “Our two site visits gave students an opportunity to learn how champagne is made: from the types of grapes chosen to the twisting of the bottles to the fermentation process that creates the bubbles,” said Martin who already is planning the next study-abroad program slated for Spain on May 3-22, 2006. For her part, Marron enjoyed the experience so much that she would like to repeat it in a different role.
“I want to stay on at the university,” she said, “and I hope that I can become a teaching assistant for a future study-abroad trip.” For more information about the many study-abroad opportunities offered through CIBER at the university, visit http://www.fiu.edu/~ciber/.
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