Manalapan student heads to Nicaragua
Quinnipiac University student Trevor Menscher of Manalapan will experience doing business under much different circumstances during his winter break.

Menscher is part of a group of 21 Quinnipiac business students joining Quinnipiac professors of management David Cadden and Ronald McMullen on a trip to Leon, Nica-ragua, from Jan. 5-14 to help entrepreneurs launch their business idea or expand their existing business.

"Students will gain a sense of unique business problems for companies in less developed economies," Cadden said in a press release provided by the Hamden, Conn., school. "The interest rate from banks may be about 48 percent."

Cadden and McMullen will lecture about business planning, marketing, basic accounting and customer relations to entrepreneurs during the first three days of the trip, and students will interview five entrepreneurs to learn about their business.

Students then will visit the business sites to learn more about them and study their competition over the next two days. Students will spend the rest of the trip writing total business plans or business plans for a specific focus, such as marketing or operations.

Students will stay with host families.

"Students will be immersed in another culture," Cadden said.

This is the fourth time since January 2007 Quinnipiac business students are going to Nicaragua. David Ives, director of Quinnipiac'sAlbert Schweitzer Institute, fostered the relationship with the business community in Leon, an underdeveloped city. Businesses students have worked with include restaurants, a uniform manufacturer and a mortuary.

Students who have visited Nicaragua have returned with real-life experience and new friends.

"For many students, their host families are as close as their own family, and students have maintained contact with the businesses they worked with," Cadden said. "Students have used the experience on their resume and that has helped in their job searches."

Quinnipiac's School of Business is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International and featured in "Best 296 Business Schools: 2009 Edition," published by Random House/The Princeton Review.

The Albert Schweitzer Institute is a nonprofit organization founded in 2001. It conducts conferences, lectures and workshops around the world that link education, ethics and volunteerism. The institute's programs promote health care development in underserved areas, motivate young people to do community service and increase global awareness of Schweitzer's philosophy of reverence for life.