ITS @ Belmont University

For the next several days, Massey Graduate School students will be blogging some of their experiences in South Africa. Jeff Overby, assistant professor in marketing and international business, who is leading the group describes the trip:

"This International Business Field Study course is unique among graduate business programs because all Massey graduate students are required to complete one international trip during their degree program. Though we will be in South Africa for only a little more than a week, we have a full itinerary. We plan to visit with various businesses and hear from a number of speakers in order to learn more about doing business in South Africa. In addition, this trip includes a special focus on social entrepreneurship. We are going to see real-life examples of how individuals have used their entrepreneurial skills to solve social problems and empower the poor, and in the process, better understand the interrelationships between poverty, AIDS, and economic development."

Strictly Business, the host site for the South Africa trip, is a newly launched blog for Belmont University's undergraduate and graduate business faculty. Several faculty members have received training on the basics of blogging and expect to begin posting soon. Strictly Business is Belmont's first experiment with a non-mission-trip, group blog with approximately 15 faculty contributors. Multiple contributors create the possibility to maintain a good flow of fresh posts throughout the month without overburdening any particular author.

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 04:29 AM | Permalink

Freshly baked from Belmont University's blog server comes a new group blog from the LockeSmith Institute, The LockeSmith Blog. Nathan Griffith and Mark Schenkel are taking the lead with Jeff Cornwall providing additional guest blogging support. From Nathan's first post:

"So our plan for the blog is this. Two of us, myself and Dr. Mark Schenkel, will make regular blog posts. I am a political scientist, and Mark is a professor of entrepreneurship. I’ll let him tell you in his posts what to expect from him. As for me, I plan to provide a classical liberal commentary on current events. Given my interests, I’ll probably focus on events in a few particular areas. One of these, regional integration and international organization, is a relatively rare—not to say odd—area of interest among classical liberals, at least so far as I can tell.

I also have interests (and training) in law, particularly constitutional and public international law. I’m not a professional in regard to either by any means, but I’m a fairly well-educated amateur. The area of constitutional law is, of course, well-populated with classical liberals, but apparently still not enough. Maybe one more voice in the chorus will get the goblet to crack."

Within 24 hours of the first post to the blog, History News Network included an announcement of the blog's launch (hat tip to Amy Sturgis and Larry Hall).

Posted by Paul Chenoweth at 07:55 AM | Permalink