Most of Penn’s campus is relatively quiet now that graduation weekend has passed, but that is not the case at the Lauder Institute. In fact, this is one of our busiest times of year as we welcome the newest class of students pursuing their Wharton MBA and MA in International Studies through our unique joint-degree program.
Several weeks ago 72 new members of the Lauder Class of 2015, including seven students in our inaugural Global Program, joined us in Philadelphia to begin a demanding but incredibly rewarding two years. Already they have visited Estee Lauder Companies in New York City to meet with the Lauder family and other executives, attended several Lauder alumni networking events, and are well on their way to finishing two Lauder classes, including International Political Economy of Business Environments taught by Mauro Guillen, Lauder Director and Dr. Felix Zandman Endowed Professor in International Management. They are also preparing for their upcoming summer immersion program, where each of our ten programs (Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Global, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish) spend two months in a country/ies that corresponds to their regional or global concentration. The focus of summer immersion is to advance students’ language proficiency and develop their ability to discuss complex social, political, cultural, and economic issues. Students also take part in cultural excursions, corporate visits to a diverse set of organizations in the region, and complete a research project on a topic related to their summer immersion, which is published by Knowledge at Wharton in the annual Lauder Global Business Insight Report
While the Class of 2015 is exploring Philadelphia, the Class of 2014 is spanning the globe as they pursue internships everywhere from Moscow to Cape Town to Bogota, conducting overseas research for their Global Knowledge Lab projects, and participating in Lauder’s Culture Quest Launched in 2011, the annual Lauder Culture Quest is an experience designed to challenge Lauder students to interact personally with the peoples and cultures of various countries in a given region through an exciting 10-day race. Through creativity and resourcefulness, participants demonstrate teamwork by completing challenging tasks that impact local communities in positive ways. This year’s program started in Vienna and the groups are just making their way to the final destination of Istanbul!
If you’re interested in integrating an MA in International Studies with the Wharton MBA we invite you to join us this summer at an information session to learn more about Lauder and how we combine international business and management education, advanced language study, global and regional focuses, dynamic research projects, and an overseas summer immersion into our joint-degree program. Learn more about where we’ll be this summer on our events page.
For general information about Lauder please visit ourwebsiteor reach out to Meghan Ellis, Associate Director of Admissions, at ellismeg@wharton.upenn.edu