GLOBAL BUSINESS CONCENTRATION PROGRAM OFFERS FIRST-HAND GUIDANCE AND EXPERIENCE

By Sam Donnellon

“I really didn’t know what the heck I was getting into,’’ he says, laughing.

In turning Bubba’s Hot Dogs into a well-known Sea Isle spot, McNamara had to learn by doing, while suffering all the costs incurred by the inevitable mistakes. Now a teacher at La Salle College High School, his is just one of the life experiences he and Brother Anthony Baginski, FSC present to students involved in La Salle’s first-year Global Business Concentration Program.

Global Business is the newest of what are now three concentration programs developed at the school in the past year. Like the IT Concentration and the Engineering Concentration, Global Business students take seminar courses, create professional portfolios, and complete capstone projects. The program will include guest lectures, field trips, immersion experiences, site visits, and above all mentoring from La Salle’s loyal alums.

“The idea of all these concentrations is to give your son an insight into what the career possibilities are and also what the requirements are academically in college to make that connection in the student’s mind between what’s going on within the four walls of a classroom and their future,’’ says Brother Anthony.

That explains, says McNamara, why some of the concentration electives don’t, at first glance, sound very business-like. But both Public Speaking and East Asian Studies are handy tools when it comes to the global business world.

As the program develops, McNamara and Brother Anthony hope to develop short internships in which the student spends as much as a week inside the business of a La Salle alumnus – even an alumnus who is in the early stages of a career himself.

“For many of these high school students to talk to somebody who’s 25 years old and can say, ’well two years ago I started my first full-time job and here’s how it went is beneficial,’’’ says Brother Anthony. “’Here’s what I did for interviews. Here are some things that I recommend, here’s some of the mistakes that I made that I hope you avoid.’

“We have a pretty esteemed alumni group, folks that have done pretty darn well,’’ says Brother Anthony. “And a lot of those folks are already very excited about stepping up and helping us out. We may even have dinners around a conference table with some of our successful alumni.

McNamara and Baginski both joined La Salle’s Social Science Department this fall as teachers. Baginski was the principal of Central Catholic in Pittsburgh for the last seven years, but actually began his path with an 11-year stint as a commissioned officer in the Coast Guard before becoming a teacher and ultimately joining the De La Salle Christian Brothers.