Faculty with Real-World Experience

Harold Walter Siebens School of Business faculty members have experience in a variety of professional fields, including: transactional law; wealth management; finance and investment; data processing; information systems; economic analysis; expert witness consultancy; foundries and steel-making; as practicing attorneys; and in the business ends of food manufacturing, farming, consumer goods manufacturing and industrial and commercial manufacturing systems. Our professors bring their experiences to the classroom, helping you to understand how what you are learning is applied in the working world.

J-Term Travel Courses

January's three-week "J-term" travel courses take you to experience the world of business at its centers through several well-established and regularly-offered academic excursions. 

You'll have the opportunity to go behind the scenes of Orlando's major theme parks in the Florida business and media interim course The Extreme Theme Park & Resort Experience, most recently offered in January 2010. The trip provides an up-close look at the inner workings of theme parks (including Disney World and Universal Studios) - including the entertainment, hospitality, and recreation they offer - by arranging meetings directly with the park's media and public relations professionals. As a trip participant, you'll analyze the parks from financial, marketing, communication and public relations perspectives. You'll also utilize annual reports, videos, analyst opinions and advertising to get a feel for the business and media aspects of the theme park industry.

Through a travel course in sports marketing and management, you'll go to Phoenix to see on-site what happens on the field and in the offices of the city's professional sports franchises, including collegiate athletics, auto racing, and professional golf. You'll talk with professionals in the business and marketing divisions of diverse sports organizations as you explore the sports-related industries of marketing, management, recreation and hospitality in the city. Past trips have visited with professionals at the Arizona Cardinals, Karsten Manufacturing (makers of Ping golf products), Arizona State University, and the U.S. Airways Arena. The trip was most recently offered in 2008 and will be offered again in 2011.

The New York City business interim includes visits to Wall Street, the Federal Reserve Bank and its gold vault, the United Nations, the New York Mercantile Exchange and crude oil trading pits, Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and investment banks, as well as historic, entertainment and cultural locations. This trip was offered most recently in 2010.

Internationally, students have taken unique courses that explored the commercial development on the Nile and the social, biological and economic effects of ecotourism in the Galapagos. Other business-related trips have gone to Turkey, Greece, Australia and New Zealand. Other courses planned for the next several years include trips to Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Off-Campus Excursions

Over weekends and breaks, student organizations often organize short trips with goals similar to those of the J-term courses. In recent years, the Accounting, Marketing, and Business Clubs have traveled to Omaha, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, Des Moines, and Chicago, mixing business tours, professional development seminars, worksite visits and sightseeing.

Visiting Speakers

The Harold Walter Siebens School of Business regularly brings speakers to campus to discuss the insights they have gained from their careers. Among the entrepreneurs and professionals who have visited campus are: fly fishers Emily and Dave Whitlock; artist, entrepreneur and 2009 BVU artist-in-residence Peter Strandh; Franklin Templeton Investment advisor Heather Waddell; international economist Fungisai Nota; insurance executive and inspirational speaker Barry Carlson; and retired CEO of Fareway Stores Bob Cramer.