Making Connections In the past, business students could study management and the bottom line, and then clock out for the day, content in their expertise. Those days are gone. With the business of nations, industries and people converging into ever-tighter circles, students need to understand how their professions and projects connect with the larger world. USD has seen the change coming. Business students recognize the need to consider people and the planet along with profits. Law students stockpile political and international acumen. And in our increasingly diverse world, all students strive to become proficient in the skills that build peace between nations, cultures and individuals. Toward these ends, USD encourages its faculty to build partnerships and exchange ideas across all borders — between academic divisions, between professions, between members of the university and the community — to develop new synergies and prepare students for this new order.
Joint degree programs — such as the Master of Arts in International Relations/Master of Business Administration — are just the start. USD’s new Center for Peace and Commerce, a united effort between the School of Peace Studies and the School of Business Administration, blends business principles with peacebuilding and poverty alleviation, and is a peek into the future. The new environmental studies major in the College of Arts and Sciences relies on multiple perspectives — the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities — to examine environmental issues. Even within the USD community, collaborative efforts between faculty, staff and student groups energize ideas and fuel initiatives. While the problems of the world are complex, students who can explore solutions in concert with others, from multiple perspectives will lead us to the lasting results needed in our global community.
U N I V E R S I T Y O F S A N D I E G O / www.sandiego.edu
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