FIELD STUDIES IN BUSINESS CULTURE: CFS 388
Modality & Eligibility: This course takes place on Zoom.
In Fall, Winter, or Spring, this course is only available to students whose internships require them to live and work in-person far from the Chicago area for a substantial portion of the quarter.
In Summer, this course is also taught on Zoom (like most CFS Summer courses) and is open to students with any internship location.
Credits available: 1-4 credits during Fall, Winter, Spring, or Summer.
Credits toward degree: The course satisfies Northwestern's Undergraduate Registration Requirement (URR).
Course Description
During this quarter, your internship will immerse you in the complex world of business culture. This course is designed to deepen your experience of this world through an exploration of the social, cultural, and political debates currently shaping business culture, particularly (but not only) as they pertain to interns and internships. Our aim is to understand how business culture has been and is continually modified around changing norms, values, and practices, with the ultimate goal of helping you critically think about, speak about, and maneuver in your place of work.
This course is organized into two main units. In the first, we introduce several overarching trends in contemporary business culture, focusing especially on the educational and professional purpose of internships, before tracing how this culture arose, developed, and established itself from the 19th to the 21st centuries. In the second, students will use the conceptual and historical background provided in the first half of the class as a launching pad for their own independent research projects. These projects will focus on understanding, contextualizing, and potentially even recommending solutions to some critical debate or challenge defining business culture today, such as corporate social responsibility, diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and technology and automation in the era of COVID-19. Class sessions in the latter half of class will thus revolve around student presentations and discussion related to their ongoing research, which will culminate in a final project, to be turned in at the end of class.
Along with weekly readings and seminar discussions, class assignments will require you to unite theory and practice as you consider the relationship between course material and your own internship experiences. In this sense, this course and your internship will prove mutually reinforcing. While in-class work will provide you with basic theories and research tools with which to better understand your internship experience, your internship experience will in turn allow you to hone these theories and tools as the course progresses. As a result, by the end of the quarter you will be able to think, speak, and act more knowledgeably in the complex world of business culture.
Possible Instructors: Nick Dorzweiler, Lauren Baker
Types of Internships that relate to the Field Studies in Business Culture course: ALL
Internships can be in ANY field. Students are responsible for securing their internship. Please see our Sample Internships page for more information.