John Trapani says the Freeman School currently has more than 500 students from around the world enrolled in various graduate programs.
As John Trapani listened to the names of graduates at this year’s Freeman School diploma ceremony, a thought struck him: Nearly half of the 700-plus degree recipients were from outside the U.S.
“I leaned over to one of our faculty members and said, ‘What you’re witnessing is the export of educational services,’” laughs Trapani, the Martin F. Schmidt Chair of International Business. “We’re exporting our services to China and Latin America and elsewhere, and that’s a good thing for the United States.”
As executive director of the Goldring Institute of International Business, Trapani has been exporting Freeman School educational programs for 25 years, but in the last several years, Trapani says, the number of students enrolled in those programs has reached an all-time high.
“We don’t always get the recognition for it, but we have more than 500 students from around the world pursuing our master’s degrees right now,” Trapani says. “That’s a huge number for a school our size.”
The size and scope of the Freeman School’s international initiatives surprised even Dean Ira Solomon.
“When I was a candidate for the dean’s position, nobody really told me the extent to which the school has such a heritage of global engagement,” Solomon says. “There are other schools around the country that really beat their chests about these things, but we’ve been relatively quiet about it. That’s something I’d like to change, because there aren’t many other schools with the breadth and depth of experience in global business that we have.”
Summer is traditionally the time when many students in the Freeman School’s international programs travel to New Orleans to take classes in fulfillment of their campus residency requirements. This summer, the Goldring Institute welcomed more than 150 international students to campus for classes in conjunction with a variety of programs.
Those programs included the CENTRUM-Tulane Global EMBA program, a 48-hour dual degree program for executive students in Lima, Peru; the ICESI-Tulane Global MBA program, a 36-hour dual degree Master of Management program for MBA students in Cali, Colombia; the UFM-Tulane Master of Management program, a 36-hour dual degree master’s program for students in Guatemala City, Guatemala; and the Latin American Faculty Development PhD Program, a business doctoral program for faculty members at leading universities throughout Latin America. While there was a lot of activity on campus this summer, it was just one small part of the Freeman School’s summer programs. In addition to the students who spent time in New Orleans this summer, the Goldring Institute and the Stewart Center for Executive Education sent more than 250 students to Europe, China, Latin America and India for coursework in conjunction with various programs.
This year alone, career and education website Business Research Guide rated the Freeman School as the fifth best school in the country for studying business abroad, and students ranked Freeman No. 5 in the world for international business in a Financial Times survey. While those rankings might surprise people who associate international business with high-profile schools like Wharton, Trapani says it doesn’t surprise him one bit.
“I think what it tells us is our students like what we’re doing and think we really know what we’re doing,” Trapani says. “We may not be the biggest, but if our customers think we’re doing a good job, that’s a very good thing.”
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