Coinciding with recent presidential efforts to stabilize U.S. and Cuban relations, MIT Sloan’s blog published a press release announcing two eight-day spring break study tours to Cuba. The school is mounting trips—one of which is entitled “The United States and Cuba: Evolving Economies”—for MIT Sloan students to “explore the business and cultural implications of renewed diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.”
Students taking part in the tours have prepared site-specific questions, which they will use as the basis for research papers once they return to campus. These students will operate in small teams to investigate topics such as “entrepreneurship on the island to the rum and cigar industries, baseball, and immigration patterns and policy,” according to the press release.
The trip is of particular significance to second-year MBA student Victor Lanio, whose family left Cuba in 1962 and whose father, Victor Lanio, Sr., helped organize the study tour. According to Lanio, “My family has been waiting for the Castro regime to end for nearly 60 years to return to the island.”
One group, accompanied by MIT Sloan lecturer Ben Shields and MBA program director Maura Herson, will visit Miami’s Little Havana before heading to its bigger progenitor in Cuba. Another group, accompanied by Professor Renée Richardson Gosline, will compare “development and behavior” between Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago.
In a seminar designed to offer context to participating students, MIT Sloan hosted lectures from independent Cuban media company 14ymedio director Alejandro González and Major League Baseball VP Patrick Houlihan, both of whom harbor unique insights into U.S.-Cuban relations.
MIT Sloan students play a major role in organizing their own tours, which enables them to explore areas of interest for course credit while developing the necessary leadership skills to manage trip logistics. Staff and faculty advisors work with student organizing teams to orchestrate schedules and syllabi. After several weeks of on-campus meetings where a region or several regions are chosen as spring break destinations, approximately two-dozen students will make the trek. According to the press release, “Other study tours this year include trips to New Zealand, Ghana and Ivory Coast, Southeast Asia, and the United Kingdom.”
Ben Shields commented on the potential long-term implications of the study tour:
“From my perspective, the United States and Cuba are at an inflection point. The relationship is undergoing monumental and transformational change. To gain firsthand perspective on how the economy and culture of Cuba are adjusting to these new relations will be a once in a lifetime experience for our students.”