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Learning Begins With Service

July 10, 2009

The first assignment for newly arrived International MBA (IMBA) students this summer wasn’t in the classroom.

 IMBA Class of 2011
IMBA Class of 2011
Instead, they donned TeamMBA t-shirts and headed out to participate in a variety of community service projects in the Columbia area. Teams picked up trash along the Saluda River; cleaned and restocked the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store; pulled weeds, trimmed bushes, and helped beautify Riverfront Park; and assisted with office work at the Waverly Free Medical Clinic.

The IMBAs’ community service is a prelude to community projects this fall, in which all incoming graduate students – Master of Accountancy, Master of Arts in Economics, Master of Human Resources, and the new Master of International Business – participate. The community service projects take place during orientation in mid-August.

Students continue to serve in the community throughout their graduate career. Last spring, for example, a number of IMBA students participated in Relay for Life and held a variety of activities to raise money and awareness for the American Cancer Society.

In her address to incoming IMBA students in June, Dean Hildy Teegen stressed many important issues, including the importance of knowing the community you live in and how "giving back" in that community is so vitally important.

The students' community service also dovetails with the Moore School’s stated strategic direction of Sustainable Enterprise and Development, one theme of which is the responsibility of businesspeople to support the communities where they do business.

Written by Gail Crouch

IMBA team members work together to clean up the park. Team of IMBAs carefully maneuver among the rocks.
IMBAs get pointers from
Saluda River employee. 
IMBA team members work together to clean up the park.  Team of IMBAs carefully 
maneuver among the rocks.
 

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