Global Affairs & International Business (2024)

• Our alumni work in all areas of business: analysis, sales, consulting, management, logistics, accounting, information systems, sports, health care. Many have gone on to graduate study in business, law, and other areas.
• The Department of Business offers a major and a minor in Business Administration, a major and a minor in Accounting, a major in Finance, and a major in Global Affairs and International Business.
• We have a close relationship with the Career Services Department. Jointly we run a Corporate Internship program, through which students are placed in internships that are overseen by our faculty.
• Our professors have multiple, advanced degrees in management, accounting, finance, economics, taxation, and law.
• The top 20% of business juniors and seniors is qualified for membership in Sigma Beta Delta, the business honor society.

INTERNSHIPS:

Ave Maria University is fortunate to be connected to a strong, nationally-recognized network of business managers and CEOs who are looking for the skills and the virtues that characterize Ave Maria students. We are very active in developing our students’ career potential, connecting them with suitable internships, and ensuring their success.

CAREERS:

The Global Affairs and International Business major prepares you for careers that need people who are familiar with the workings of the world economy, with exchange rates and capital flows, with international risk assessment and converging economic development, with diversity in legal structures and the variety of cultures. This means that the GAIB major will open up possibilities in three different areas: businesses that operate across borders (export and import, outsourcing, multinationals); international financial institutions (banks, stock markets, multilateral lenders); and governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that work in diplomacy, conflict resolution, and economic aid.

AFFILIATIONS:

The Business Honor Society Sigma Beta Delta has a chapter at Ave Maria University, to which the top twenty percent of juniors and seniors are admitted.

Typical Order of Required Courses for the Major

ECON 201 Principles of Macroeconomics

ECON 202 Principles of Microeconomics

POLT 202 Comparative Politics

ECON 380 Global Economics

POLT 205 Introduction to International Relations

STAT 230 Applied Statistics

Intermediate Language

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One Elective out of

ECON 301 Intermediate Macroeconomics

ECON 302 Intermediate Microeconomics

One Elective out of

POLT 302 Catholic Political Thought

ECON 315 Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Life

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Two Electives out of

POLT 314 U.S. Foreign Policy

POLT 495 Internship in Politics

ECON 316 Markets, State, and Institutions

ECON 320 Economics and Ethics of Development

ECON 322 Globalization and International Trade

ECON 421 International Macroeconomics

Politics or Economics elective (with approval of the program director)

The major in Global Affairs and International Business gives students the intellectual foundation to think about global interactions. We know that we live in a “globalized” world, in which interactions with other countries are inescapable. “Globalization” is not just a political phenomenon, or an economic phenomenon, or a cultural phenomenon: it affects the very fabric of our lives, and it does so in a million directions. Not only do we need to know about it, we need to have the intellectual foundation with which to think about interactions that span the planet. For this reason, a major like Global Affairs and International Business is an attractive complement to a solid liberal education.

While many schools may offer this kind of interdisciplinary major, what puts Ave Maria University in a position of strength is that we offer faculty in business, economics, and politics who not only have a great deal of knowledge and experience in the area but who also know each other very well and can help each other see these issues from many sides. The Global Affairs and International Business major builds on and integrates a high-quality and rigorous curriculum in economics, politics, and business, helping students become careful thinkers and actors in the global society.

Our majors emphasize analytical thinking and tools: the intellectual equipment and critical skills needed to understand and excel in business and in most other human endeavors. Ave Maria students have the unique fortune of building on a foundation of a liberal education, an education on the basic realities about God and the world, man and his relationship with God and nature. Through our liberal arts curriculum, students learn that reality is coherent and intelligible and grow in the habit – in the essential business skill – of looking for patterns and seeing the sense in the apparent contradictions of the world that surrounds them.

We aim to inspire students to become business leaders inspired by Christian ideals and governed by Christian ideas. Relying on the Catholic faith lived intensely on campus and on the general intellectual formation of the Core Curriculum, what animates the program is the Catholic view of the human person, his nature, and his ultimate destiny. The distinctive character of the program is its belief in the dignity of the human person, in the reality and importance of the common good, in subsidiarity and solidarity, in ownership as stewardship, and in responsibility for the environment. Because students learn to value human beings for what they are, not for what utility they bring, they are able to serve the Church and their society loyally and generously.