Entrepreneurial Roots and Experiential Learning

Forty years of international programs illuminate the path ahead.

Navigating seismic shifts in the global environment and relationships is nothing new to the Carlson Global Institute (CGI). Its origins 40 years ago can be traced to the entrepreneurial vision of a dean from the business sector in a time of rapid globalization before the unexpected end of the Cold War. Since then, the key skills that CGI has developed in emerging business leaders—adaptability, resilience, problem-solving, cultural agility—are the very skills that have allowed CGI to innovate and gain relevance in an ever more complex world. 

In 1985, a new dean had arrived at Minnesota Carlson from General Mills. Into his office he called a professor from the Department of Work and Organizations, Mahmood Zaidi. 

“Dustin ‘Pete’ Townley was just the second business executive to lead the school,” remembers Zaidi. “He said, ‘I am the dean, graduating students, and when I interact with employers inside and outside Minnesota, they are international. We have seven departments and not one has an international course. I had an international business course at Harvard in 1956, and this is 1985.’ He had looked through the faculty resumés and saw that, when I joined the faculty in 1966, I had negotiated to be able to do international work, teaching, research, and also travel. So he asked me to create an international office for the school, but he said he didn’t have a lot of money so I could share his secretary’s time to do it. That’s how I started the Office of International Programs for the school, which would be renamed the Carlson School of Management a year after that.” 

Zaidi got to work. Gradually hiring a bare-bones staff, he immediately began to recruit faculty in each department to create international courses and identify sites for study abroad. He raised funds constantly. He worked with Interim Dean Tim Nantell, followed by Dean David Kidwell, to begin internationalizing graduate education, navigating hurdle after hurdle. 

One of Zaidi’s proudest achievements came in 1991. The Iron Curtain had fallen, and Minnesota Carlson met the moment by joining hands with the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland. The Warsaw Executive MBA became the University of Minnesota’s first fully-accredited graduate offshore degree program in its 150-year history.
 

Expanding and accelerating

The late Marketing Professor Mike Houston was the associate dean for faculty and research in 1992 when he chaired an international task force for Minnesota Carlson. He then succeeded Zaidi as director of international programs, and the two worked together to build on the foundation Zaidi had established. 

Under Houston’s leadership, the first faculty-led study abroad program was offered to MBA students in Austria in 1996. In 2000 and 2001, CGI seized opportunities to serve new markets with executive MBA programs in Vienna and China. 

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, CGI adapted to disruptions in travel and geopolitical upheaval. Undeterred, Carlson students recognized the value of gaining international experience, and CGI staff responded with support. 

In 2005, Houston hired Anne D’Angelo to direct the Office of International Programs, by then understaffed for the level of international activities in the school. D’Angelo brought experience working with U.S. business communities in Eastern Europe and Asia. She developed a staff with expertise in international education, created partnerships with international resources across campus, and applied a systems approach and dedication to practices informed by theory and research. 

The expansion was just in time to support the implementation of the International Experience requirement added to the curriculum after a faculty vote in 2007 under the leadership of Dean Alison Davis-Blake. An International Experience requirement was soon added to the MBA programs, too. Even through a global recession, hundreds of Minnesota Carlson students were studying abroad every year.

Two new programs started in China: The Doctor of Business Administration with Tsinghua University in 2017, and the Medical Industry MBA program in Shanghai in 2019, through the efforts of Finance Professor Steve Parente, who collaborated with Houston and succeeded him as associate dean in 2020. 

Then the world was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic and, in Minneapolis, the uprising and reckoning following the murder of George Floyd. CGI steered through, supporting students at every level in getting home and then completing their International Experiences remotely. The staff deepened their learning about culture and capabilities to advance equity and access.