One of the really cool things about studying BSc Business at the Penryn Campus is the field trips!
I am currently in my third year, and have just come back from an incredible field trip to NYC for my BEP3090 Research Module. The premise of the module was to perform a mainly ethnographic study on an independently proposed research topic.
The idea was to give students the opportunity to observe business operation and internal dynamics in real life, in a national or an international context. On the trip, we were given access to international organisations and institutions through visits, guided tours, networking and informal interactions.
For my topic, I chose to observe the ways in which different organisations brand themselves to be ‘sustainable’ and whether or not these brand images held true in reality.
Read below to see a bit more of what we got up to throughout the week.
05 January 2019
Today we arrived in NYC quite late in the evening. We had a brief lecture in the accommodation meeting rooms once everyone had arrived and settled in, and then went off to bed to get some sleep before our first visit the next day to the Statue of Liberty.
06 January 2019
On Sunday we visited the Statue of Liberty. This ended up being where I focused a lot of my data collection because there were a lot of posters and infographics displayed around the park about the on-site sustainability efforts being pursued. It was absolutely freezing, but we all had so much fun that we didn’t even care! We then had a free afternoon to explore/do independent research visits before meeting up for a lecture in the evening.
07 January 2019
On Monday we had the whole day to do our own independent research and/or explore the city freely! We met in the evening in the meeting rooms at our accommodation to conduct a feed-forward session for our first business-visit the next morning at MCU (Municipal Credit Union). We made sure to plan a logical flow to all the questions and topics we would bring up at the end of the visit the next day.
08 January 2019
On Tuesday we visited the MCU and met with the CEO of the company in the office boardroom. We learned a lot about how credit unions work, how the CEO got to where he did in his career, and had an open discussion at the end of the session to ask any questions relevant to our chosen topics. We then joined him for Dim Sum in Chinatown – which was DELICIOUS! We then had a free afternoon and met up with the group later on for a lecture and feed-forward session.
09 January 2019
Wednesday was our last full day together. We started off the morning with a breakfast meeting/lecture in the meeting rooms. We spent the morning preparing for our final visit to JP Morgan. We then had some free time to get lunch and met up with the group again to go inside. We were not allowed to take any photos while inside JP Morgan, but it was a very cool experience. We did some interactive exercises to understand how to solve common HR issues in an office place and then went on to have an open discussion with some of the senior members at the firm. We ended our visit with a tour of the trading floor – which was very cool!
We ended our last day with a group dinner at Planet Hollywood in Times Square – our lecturers handed out some prizes and said some kind words and we enjoyed one last meal together before heading off back to the accommodation to pack up and prepare for our flights home the next day.
10 January 2019
Today was our final morning in the city. I used the rest of my free time to visit The HighLine and gather some more data for my research topic, and then headed off to JFK in the afternoon to go back to England!
I had such an amazing time on the BSc Business field trip and really enjoyed having an opportunity to practice my research skills in preparation for writing up my dissertation this term. I also realised on this trip, after visiting a few different firms and observing the work life in NYC, that I can even picture myself working there one day (something I could never imagine saying) and decided that I would like to apply to some firms out there after graduating from my Master’s degree next year.
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If you enjoyed this blog and are interested to hear a bit more about the BSc Business Programme, click here to take a look at the course page and how to apply, and here to find out why I chose to study at the Penryn Campus.
To read more about some of the other amazing field trips I have been on over the last three years – check out my other blog post here. 🙂
Be sure to stay tuned into @exeterunilife on Instagram to see what we all get up to each week and what student life is like at Exeter.