YSU $183,000 grant to fund business studies overseas

The grant will also pay for new courses at YSU.
YOUNGSTOWN -- Two Youngstown State University faculty members received a $183,000 federal grant for a program to allow students and local business officials to study and visit emerging economic markets in eastern Europe and Asia.
The U.S. Department of Education's two-year grant went to Ram Kasuganti, chairman of YSU's management department and a professor, and Rangamohan Eunni, a management department assistant professor. They are both faculty members at YSU's Williamson College of Business Administration and represent the business college's first federal grant recipients.
The project, called the Emerging Markets Initiative, will help to further expand YSU's business curriculum by improving faculty skills and research in international business and management education, and developing more courses in international business, Kasuganti said.
Curriculum development
New courses will include managing in emerging economies, international entrepreneurship and multinational enterprise strategies. The project also will help provide opportunities for local businesses to participate in the global economy, he said.
Outreach activities for the regional business community will include field study tours to emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, conferences on business opportunities, and consulting support to area businesses to facilitate international expansion initiatives in Eastern Europe and Asia.
Study abroad plan
The initiative calls for a team of students, faculty and regional business representatives to participate in field study tours to the Czech Republic and Hungary in March 2006 and to India in March 2007.
"The key is not to be isolationist but to be more proactive and to take advantage of opportunities," Kasuganti said.
He said businesses can no longer focus solely on local needs but must work within the global economy.
It is hard for small or new businesses to compete in saturated markets like Canada and Western Europe, but Kasuganti said there are many opportunities for local businesses to expand into some of the developing economies of the world.
The grant is part of the U.S. Department of Education's Business and International Education Program, which provides grants to internationalize the business curriculum of colleges and universities and to conduct outreach activities that assist the local business community in competing in the global arena.
Other universities receiving grants through the program this year include Kansas State, Texas A & amp;M, Northern Iowa and South Florida.