Business Admin Extracurricular – Learning Outside These Four Walls

Learning doesn’t always occur in the confines of a classroom routine. Sometimes, it’s important to step out of those four walls or bring someone from outside in. That’s exactly what professors in Evergreen College’s Business Administration in International Trade Diploma are doing. Evergreen College’s approach is providing real-world learning opportunities for its students so that they can succeed in their chosen careers. That not only means teaching the theoretical components of a course but also allowing students to experience that career first hand. Field trips are one way of doing so. Students in the Business Administration Diploma course have this year already toured two, very different, facilities. One was the Red Path manufacturing plant on Toronto’s waterfront. Here the curator not only walked students through the complex but also explained the factory’s history, its significance and how the factory’s machinery works. It gave students a comprehensive feel of what the manufacturing side of business is like. The second trip had students visiting Three Brasseurs (Three Brewers) Restaurant, a successful beer and food franchise in the heart of Toronto’s restaurant district. They were shown how the restaurant crafts its local brews and learned about the supply chain behind the final product. On the front end of things, they learned business management and what it takes to lead a varied team of staff. “It was like two modules in one” says the programme’s professor Grace Ciano. The business administration programme focuses on importing, exporting, international marketing, finance and entrepreneurship. The other option is to bring the real-world directly into the classroom through industry professional guest speakers. Most recently, payroll administrator for March of Dimes, Saraswati Pandey, spoke about how the Canadian Pension Plan, Employment Insurance benefits and income tax are computed. Business students enthusiastically came to class with their own payslips as examples and were able to have their specific questions answered by an expert. The guest lecture ended up going for more than two hours because of how engaged everyone was. Ms Ciano says Ms Pandey was an excellent role model for the students “She has solid experience in accounting but she also wanted to continue teaching. It was a great match.” Ms Pandey also had a strong connection to Evergreen College, having been a student there herself in previous years. Ms Ciano says her goal is providing students with a look into their potential future careers with every module she teaches, whether they become an entrepreneur or an international importer or exporter. She also wants to break the monotony of one style of teaching. It all adds up to a diverse and lively learning environment that helps grow informed, flexible and job-ready students.