Pitt-Bradford students and faculty to take part in exchange

Courtney McNeight, of Ellicottville, N.Y., and Sheri Smay of Mahaffey are two business management students making the initial trip along with Shane Roush, a hospitality management major from Port Allegany.

“I’ve always been set on studying abroad, and I thought this would be a good opportunity,” McNeight said. While she is able to take classes in English at Heilbronn, she will also take a course in German.

“I really like learning new languages,” she said. “I can’t wait to go. I think that everyone should study abroad, especially today.”

The program began last year, when four students from Heilbronn attended Pitt-Bradford for the fall semester.

In spring 2011, Rick Nelson, associate professor of business, taught Security Analysis, which involved two months of online teaching followed by two weeks on the Heilbronn campus.

Dr. Steven Hardin, vice president and dean of academic affairs, also made a side trip from a family vacation during the summer to visit the Heilbronn campus and finalize the agreement between the two schools that will allow three Pitt-Bradford students to begin studying at Heilbronn this coming spring.

Also during the upcoming spring semester, Dr. Shailendra Gajanan, associate professor of economics at Pitt-Bradford, will teach a course similar to that taught by Nelson last spring.

Nelson explained that Heilbronn, which specializes in business and engineering, is a very international school with students from more than 90 countries studying there. He said one way this is accommodated is by teaching many classes in English, which is a common second language throughout the world.

The arrangement first came about in 2010 after Nelson met Dr. Mathias Moersch, a professor at Heilbronn, while the two were grading exams for the CFA Institute, which awards the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Moersch had recently begun coordinating Heilbronn’s foreign studies program and asked Nelson whether Pitt-Bradford would be interested in an exchange. The two schools then reached an agreement allowing students to exchange credits and faculty to exchange teaching between the two schools.

Last year’s visitors from Heilbronn were all business students, but this year’s group includes a student in Heilbronn’s newly launched hospitality management program who is studying the same subject at Pitt-Bradford.

Mandy Lutze is the hospitality student, who said she has enjoyed the hands-on approach to hospitality classes at Pitt-Bradford.

“It’s not just classwork,” she said. Lutze has dived in to campus life at Pitt-Bradford, joining the cross-country team, playing intramural Wiffle ball and enjoying things uniquely American such as Pitt-Bradford’s Midnight Madness kickoff to the basketball season.

“We have to do everything because we might not get another chance,” she said. “There has not been one single day that I’ve been bored.”

Business management major Laura Gruber agreed. She first heard about the chance to study at Pitt-Bradford from one of last year’s Heilbronn students who spent a semester at Pitt-Bradford.

“I just love it here,” Gruber said. “We like it so much; we would like to stay longer. I feel like we just arrived. Time goes too fast here.”

Maria Schneider is the third student from Heilbronn studying at Pitt-Bradford this semester.

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