Two entrepreneurship classes will be available for UA students of all majors next spring, one featuring an optional eight-day trip to India.
Amar Gupta, senior director for the Eller College of Management's research and business development, is offering the courses to students of all majors because he believes business is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and students of all majors could benefit from learning about business and globalization within their field of study.
Gupta began teaching international business classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the spring semester of 2003 after noticing the interest students had in learning about business in developing countries.
He will be offering the same course in the spring to UA students.
"The world is becoming increasingly global and in respect to many fields, people may have to deal with colleagues from other cultures or they may have to travel," Gupta said.
Students who took the course at MIT were able to meet the president of India, Abdul Kalam, and also toured the presidential palace during a 10-day trip in India, Gupta said.
"It's one thing to teach something in a class, but it's another to go and see something firsthand," Gupta said.
Danny Lai, a marketing junior, said he is interested in taking the course.
"Because the population in India is growing so much their GDP is huge, so having an international business course focus on India is a very good idea," Lai said.
Lai said he didn't mind that the course would be offered to students of all majors because it would give more students a chance to see if they enjoyed studying business.
Gupta will also offer a course that uses information from biology, culture, sociology and other areas of study to help improve business agility and improve business systems that often need to be redesigned every two to three years because of technological changes, organization restructuring and changes in the nature of work within business, Gupta said.
The course, Accelerating Business Process Engineering and Systems Development with Reusable Business Knowledge, will be offered to students in all majors this spring. Gupta will teach the course with visiting lecturer Amit Mitra.
Stan Reynolds, vice dean of Eller College, said the intention of offering the courses was to create more elective opportunities and more courses relating to international business within the college, which he hopes will continue in the future.
Reynolds said the courses are a good opportunity for students to learn from Gupta, and he believes students will find the courses interesting.
Gupta said graduate students and undergraduate juniors and seniors can register for the courses, entrepreneurship 453/554 and entrepreneurship 459/559, through WebReg, and freshmen and sophomores who are interested in registering should contact Gupta first.