News > March 6, 2008

By Katie Phillips | Staff writer

Sixteen students from the university’s Babcock Graduate School of Management are spending this Spring Break in Nicaragua. The students, along with two faculty members, will be sharing their knowledge and learned skills of business management with Nicaraguan business owners.

Established as a two-way system of learning, not only is this beneficial to the business owners, but this opportunity gives the students a rare experience outside of the classroom.

The trip is from March 7-14, and it is the fourth trip made by Babcock students in the past year to Nicaragua.

This also marks the one year anniversary of the first seminar that was held in Managua, which is the base for the university’s ongoing business project, Project Nicaragua.

Started in the fall of 2006, Babcock students were bound by the promise of making a difference.

The project’s faculty advisor, Sherry Moss, says that the students’ goal for the approaching trip is to “scale up the seminars.”

The seminars will be serving almost double the amount of people compared to previously, and the goal is to make them more personal and specific.

“They are going to offer two simultaneous business seminars, making it possible to keep the intimate classroom environment, but serving twice as many people,” Moss said.

The students will also be working closely with returning business owners, monitoring their progress and enhancing skills.

“They (the students) are also going to work one-on-one with several of the returning participants before and after the seminars in an effort to sharpen their consulting skills while helping the entrepreneurs with their specific challenges.”

One of the project founders, Chris Yuko, currently is based in Managua and has been for the past year.

Yuko arranges the trips for the faculty and students who are coming to host the seminars.

Yoko is currently a student in the Babcock school and the Nicaraguan program director.

He has arranged for 40 business owners to be present at the seminar, putting the ratio of owners to students at almost 2:1.

“We are very proud of the impact we have had on these business leaders of Nicaragua,” Yuko said.

“There will now be more effort put into staying in contact with the business owners after the students have left and come back to Winston-Salem.

Now we desire to take it to the next level and find a way to quantify the impact we are having.”

“We are looking to establish a video conference center, which will allow us more continued direct contact with the network of businesses in Nicaragua.”

“Student teams at Wake Forest will be able to speak directly with their businesses and continue two-way learning and transfer of knowledge that takes place during the trips to Nicaragua.”

Beneficial to both sides, the business leaders will have the opportunity to discuss future endeavors and present issues with knowledged students.

In turn, the students at the university will now have the chance to continually learn from the experiences of the businessmen.

This will be a mutually beneficial exchange for both the business leaders and the students. The trip aims to help both parties.

More than 30 students are currently working through Babcock on the project. Half of these are attending the trip next week.

Neela Rajendra, a second year Babcock student, is about to make her second trip to Nicaragua.

“Project Nicaragua allows students to learn that we, as future business leaders, have a responsibility to society,” Rajendra said.

“These experiences cannot be duplicated in the classroom. The impact that we have on the Nicaraguan business owners is small; the impact they have on us is much greater.”