Written by Aušrinė Šilenskytė, School of Management, University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
Organizations are made of people, and therefore the project started by building stronger bridges between the teams from the University of Vaasa and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). It was wonderful to visit colleagues at the PUCP, Peru, on 28 March – 6 April 2024, learn about the partner university, discuss foundations for implementing project activities, and deliver lectures in our joint course.
The PUCP campus and opportunities it offers for the incoming foreign students
The visit started by exploring a beautiful campus of the PUCP with the guided tour by Geraldine Nicole Caldas Silva. Students spend extensive hours on campus and campus experience largely defines their interest to visit the university as well as their satisfaction with the visit.
It was fascinating to see comfortable classroom facilities, lots of meal options with student-friendly prices, amazing green parks where students can spend their time after classes, large and well-equipped library, sports facilities of different kinds, and very lively campus environment. Every Thursday afternoon students have no classes and instead organize various culture-related activities. The campus at the PUCP is not only beautiful, but also very sustainable – it ranks as a most sustainable campus in the country. Students can even see animals in the dedicated areas and learn about history by exploring the remains of the Incas trail that cross the campus.
While we knew that the PUCP is a fantastic partner to build joint education, the tour of the campus during the first visit allowed us to gather the needed materials and facts to transfer the confidence to the University of Vaasa students about the wonderful experiences that are awaiting them when going for the exchange or double-degree studies at the PUCP.
Teacher exchange: Discussing sustainability and advanced technologies in international business
It was an honor to deliver insights on the topic of sustainability and advanced technologies in international business interacting with smart and very talkative PUCP students. We explored many case examples in this context, discussed how businesses around the world use advanced technology to enable the implementation of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and critically reflected on their efforts, considering whether these efforts make the intended impact and do they have any unwanted or unintended effects. Since classes at the PUCP take a bit longer than in Finland, we also had a chance to delve deeper in a longer case and discussed the case “Case: Crisis dead – long live the crisis! Apple Inc.: managing the post-pandemic and cargo thefts crises” (Ahsan, J. & Šilenskytė, A. (2023)).
The visit also gave us the possibility to extensively work on the joint Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)-based course that we have been implementing together with Hellen Lopez and Ester Xicota. Since we were doing this course for the first time, we could dedicate time to extensively discuss the principles of student team formation and finalize the teams, discuss the course content and its improvements for the following year, and understand better teaching methodologies in each institution without being limited with the time zone issues, which typically is a key when working with 8-hour time difference between Finland and Peru.
Teaching café: Social sustainability in business education
Sustainability is the topic that unites both universities and therefore discussing how to develop education to support sustainable development, learning from the best practices in both universities is a major opportunity that the ESGinMNC project brought to us.
During my visit, colleagues organized a Teaching café to exchange ideas about social sustainability in business education. Together with Miguel Cordova, we had an honor to present our co-edited, newly published book “The Palgrave Handbook of Social Sustainability in Business Education” (Aušrinė Šilenskytė, Miguel Cordova, Marina A. Schmitz, Soo Min Toh, 2024), and also hear from colleagues at the PUCP who have contribute to the book and who have been developing business education for sustainability. It was fruitful and highly inspiring co-learning experience.
In addition, the PUCP organized a lovely video-making to share my thoughts about the social sustainability in business and business education. The video was shared in social media and can be accessed here.
Exchanging ideas on business education development in Finland and Peru
Insightful conversations continued with many focused meetings. It was eye-opening to discuss with bachelor’s degree in business administration study specializations’ coordinators Regina Soriano (business stream), Guiselle Romero (public management stream), Hellen Lopez (social management). In our meeting, we discussed best practices in bachelor’s degree education, incorporating sustainability, and potential collaborations between the study streams.
We also held several meetings with the management team (in the first photo) of the School of Management at the PUCP, building the foundations for deepening our collaboration. Together with Mónica Bonifaz, Dean, María Elena Esparza, Director of Studies, Jean Pierre Seclen, Head of department, and Edgardo Cruzado, Coordinator of internationalization, School of Management, PUCP, we explored double degree development. We started from sharing the experience of the University of Vaasa in building double degrees with the European universities and discussing how we could make things work with the first non-EU partner – the PUCP. The discussions allowed us comprehending better the differences between the education’s legal frameworks, delivery model, degree requirements, and what this will mean when aiming to have a joint double degree program between our institutions. The work that we started and the discussions searching for the solutions will continue until the end of the project with, hopefully, successfully implemented joint double degree in international business, with the focus on sustainability in business.
Acknowledgement
This visit was part of a collaborative project “Education for sustainable internationalisation of a firm (ESGinMNC)” uniting the PUCP and the University of Vaasa. The project was funded by the Finnish National Agency of Education, TFK 2023. This project has been coordinated by Aušrinė Šilenskytė, Program manager and researcher at the University of Vaasa, Finland.
