Name the largest student
group at Notre Dame without saxophones.
The largest with
them, naturally, is the Notre Dame Band, which had 360 members
last fall, including 52 saxophone players.
Second in size, with
about 300 students, is an organization that's much less visible
and more than a hundred years younger.
The Student International
Business Council, founded in 1988 (versus 1846 for the band) bills
itself as the largest academic student organization on campus.
It's also undoubtedly the wealthiest, with an endowment valued
at $3.3 million, according to the organization's adviser, Susan
M. Soisson, an assistant program manager in the Division of Student
Activities.
The business council
began as the Notre Dame Council on International Business Development.
It was based on an idea of Father Hesburgh's and was established
with an endowment gift from attorney and investor Frank Potenziani
'67. The name was changed in 2000. More recently a similar organization
for Notre Dame alumni has been established. It's called the International
Business Council.
As its name suggests,
the Student International Business Council promotes student involvement
in and knowledge of international business. One if its main activities
is arranging internships with companies in foreign countries.
Members also undertake about 30 group projects each semester involving
case studies of companies, market analyses and the like.
But this is more
than a club for future business executives. About a third of the
group's membership is non-business majors. Soisson says many members
who are Arts and Letters majors were attracted to the organization
by its projects involving economic development in poor areas of
the world. In recent years the group has been active in Haiti,
supporting the production of bed nets to protect people from disease-carrying
insects, and production of iodized salt, which guards against
problems with stunted body growth and diminished brain development.
Among the organization's
latest initiatives is an effort to establish a kind of mini-business
school for women living in the Kibera slum near a Holy Cross mission
outside Nairobi, Kenya. The Jim Karaffa Business Academy for Women
aims to teach women how to make a subsistence living for themselves
and support their families through farming, craft-making and similar
activities, says senior Dan Degen, the council's director of global
development.
"The idea is basically
taking whatever they have a joy for or love for and putting that
into a business setting," says Degen, adding that the lessons
also will focus on Catholic values.
The academy is named
in memory of a Holy Cross priest and double Domer who ministered
to people living in the slum. He was trampled to death by a giraffe
while hiking in a Kenyan game park in 2002.
U.S. government advisories
against travel to Kenya have prevented students from journeying
to the area the past three years. But Degan
says he and fellow senior Patrick Magee, one of the Kibera project's
leaders, plan to organize a trip with the alumni council after
they graduate in May.
(January 2005)
