University of South Florida St. Petersburg » Eric Douthirt ’13

Lake Atitlan

Eric Douthirt '13 — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:10:23 +0000

I literally NEVER thought that I would have the opportunity to go on a Study Abroad trip.

That was until recently when I decided to take the plunge and commit to the Spring Break 2013 MBA trip to Guatemala.

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am for this opportunity. We’ll be fully engaged with local businesses in the village of Lake Atitlan where we will act as consultants, helping business owners with anything from marketing to improving efficiency in their operations.

I’ve heard from past students who have done this trip before that it is an “absolutely incredible” experience… and the best part is that both we, the students, and the local business owners get a lot of value from it.

The trip is only a week long, but I’ve been told that we’ll be kept VERY busy in order to get the most out of our time there.

I can’t wait!

Hmmm… maybe I should ask Santa for a Spanish version of Rosetta Stone for Christmas.

The Melting Pot MBA

Eric Douthirt '13 — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 20:54:30 +0000

I love the diversity in educational backgrounds present in our MBA classrooms at USFSP. I thought I would be the outsider coming in with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, but it turns out it couldn’t be further from the truth. Almost half of my classmates have bachelor’s degrees in non-business majors. I think the diversity adds value to the classroom. People with differing views or backgrounds will often add interesting context to classroom discussions that could otherwise be very uni-directional.

I think it also goes to show how mobile a degree the MBA really is. Just as the incoming student have such a variety of backgrounds, their career goals going forward are just as diverse. The faculty in our program embrace this diversity and encourage us to utilize our variety of skill-sets in classroom as well as real world applications.

If you have considered a MBA but hesitated because you have a bachelor’s degree in a non-business major, my advice is to jump right in! You’ll be pleasantly surprise at how nice the water is at USFSP!

Sustainability in Business Education

Eric Douthirt '13 — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:58:46 +0000

Recently, I was able to attend the AACSB Sustainability in Business Education Conferenc e as a MBA student representative of USFSP. I was VERY excited! Sustainability is a passion of mine, and despite the fact that the business world tends to have a bad reputation in terms of sustainability efforts, it was fascinating to see examples of some of the legitimate advances that have been made.

A common theme that surprised me is that the business world itself has made significantly more progress in terms of sustainability initiatives than business education has in teaching students to manage with the triple-bottom-line (people, planet, profits). However, the engaged crowd of business faculty from around the country left me feeling optimistic about the future of sustainability in business education.

I’m proud to say that the USFSP College of Business embraces Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in its graduate curriculum. CSR has been a constant theme in my MBA so far and for good reason… sustainable business is not only the future, it’s the present as well.