Twenty-four Burns School students embarked on “the trip of a lifetime”
When Ashley Cullen traveled to India and Dubai on a Daniels College of Business trip last month, she experienced a number of highlights: She marveled at the Taj Mahal; made her way to the top of the tallest tower in the world—the Burj Khalifa; rode a camel and went dune bashing in the Dubai desert; and visited the spectacular Dubai Mall.
But the biggest highlight, she says, was the knowledge she gained about the international real estate industry by listening to guest lectures, learning about other cities’ development plans, working on a project about the Mumbai coastal highway and more.
“It definitely was a once-in-a-lifetime trip,” said Cullen, a senior at the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management (RECM) at the Daniels College of Business. “It opened my eyes to realms of the real estate industry I hadn’t explored before. And it was great to get to know people in the major better. .”
Cullen was one of 24 students—14 undergraduates and 10 graduate students—who took a 15-day trip to India and Dubai this winter to learn about the countries’ real estate and construction industries. Although other programs at the Daniels College of Business regularly take international trips, Vivek Sah, director of the Burns School, says it’s a unique experience for his students—and it’s also an important one.
“We want to give students global exposure to the markets. With real estate, we often think about it very locally, but real estate has changed a lot in the last two decades, and everything is very integrated. You don’t know who’s funding what, even if [a project] is local. A lot of the large developers are with worldwide firms,” explained Sah, who prioritized global immersion programs when joined DU in 2022. “Getting this kind of exposure will help students not only understand the markets over there, but also get that experience so they can add it to their resume.
“We want to be a global program,” he said, “and we cannot be a global program if the students don’t get exposure to the global real estate market.”
The school chose Dubai because it’s an “incredibly unique, impressive market,” Sah explained, “in that there’s a belief that they will build and people will come, rather than what we do [in the U.S.], where we have to find people to invest, we have to find demand and do market research and things like that first.”
India was chosen because of Sah’s background: He was born in Delhi, so he knew a lot about the market and the culture. Plus, he had relationships and connections there.
Students met with DU alumni, listened to guest lectures and went on site visits while in Dubai. In India, they worked on case studies at a local university with students who attend the school. “It was like a mini consulting project in a short duration,” Sah said. “They were able to work on group construction management and real estate projects with faculty leading them.”
There were some leisure time and fun activities thrown in the mix, too, including sightseeing and cultural excursions.
The goal of the trip, Sah said, was to open students’ eyes—helping them to understand the markets abroad and giving them business knowledge, as well as immersing them culturally.
Drew Matsushima says the trip did just that. “The global immersion part wasn’t just on the business side, but the cultural side,” said Matsushima, a graduate student who works as a coordinator at Conscience Bay Company, a real estate investment and management firm in Boulder.
“It gave me perspective for different parts of the world, specifically in real estate and in business. And that’s something that you don’t always have access to when you travel for leisure or by yourself,” he said. “Having an organized trip where you’re meeting with business professionals, where you’re understanding how other countries around the world are built, you’re finding out about their perspectives, and you’re building new connections. It was a great experience.”
One of his favorite parts of the trip was simply having dinner with partners he worked with in India and learning more about them, what they experience, what their food and flavors are like.
“It’s almost something you can’t put into words. You experience it, and it’s so wholesome. You are invited with food, dancing and vibrant culture as if you’re accepted within the community,” Matsushima says. “From a high-level perspective, it’s given me a deeper appreciation for building relationships on a global scale.”
The trip was so successful that the international program will be an annual feature of the Burns School going forward, Sah said. Dubai will likely remain a destination on the trip every year, while the second location will change. Sah is considering taking students to either Singapore or Liverpool, England, later this year.
“We want to be a global leader in our real estate program,” Sah said. “This experience will help with that.”
This is the most amazing program connecting students with international options!!
Sounds like all aspects of life’s experiences being included, these young people are years ahead of other competitors.