This is a minor about the United States of America. Why would that be interesting for you? We see that there is a need for students from various educational and cultural backgrounds to understand the world we live in. They realize they need to understand various viewpoints to reflect and grow (and become a flexible and agile professional). This USA minor allows students to learn about the political, social, and economic background of a powerful player in the world arena, the USA.

All this is offered through lectures, workshops, collaboration with real companies, students from the USA, and a trip to the States as well!

In a nutshell, the minor will provide a Socio-Economic & Cultural overview of contemporary America. The main aim of the content is to give you a deeper understanding of today’s America. This will give an objective basis for those who wish to know about the superpower it is in the world today, the potential changes that are to come, and how the world economy will be affected.

In this minor, you will partly work together with students from the Sports Entertainment Management degree program at the University of Northern Texas, Dallas. You jointly work on cases brought in by a selected set of companies from the Netherlands and the USA. These organizations are in the field of Sport, Innovation, and Technology. Part of the minor is a facilitated study trip to the USA. During this trip, you will see in practice what you learn in the minor. For the trip, we plan to visit popular American sporting events such as an NBA game, a football game, a NASCAR event, meet with Political figures in the visiting areas, engage in company visits, university campus visits, and excursions to museums, cultural hotspots, places of importance in the American culture.

1. Students will obtain valuable business insights and educational knowledge concerning the American Business & Culture in the 21st century.
2. Understand, apply and analyze the main macro-economic principles and policies and being able to relate them to America’s (economic) position in the world as well as current global economic developments.
3. Understand, apply and analyze America’s economic model and its monetary and financial system and the central role it (still) has in the world economy.
4. Understand, apply and analyze cultural issues in American society and apply these in business cases. Focus is on history, politics, sociology and regionalism.
5. A specific and relevant knowledge and experience of American business practices and real case-studies on location in the USA. This will be used to create solutions stemming from the cases.
6. Student shows that he/she can apply knowledge and insights at business cases related to his own specific degree program. This knowledge and insight will be analysed and evaluated.

If you register for this minor you are expected to have an interest in developing knowledge on basic social, political, and economic theories and the contemporary international business environment of the USA. If you are a student from a non-economic background you are also very welcome to take part in the minor. In the intake interview we jointly see if your individual learning objectives meet the learning objectives from this minor. The advice from the interview is non-binding.

The minor has an obvious and structural international character – both the learning and social environment will be in English. We expect you to master English at B1/B2 level. This will not be tested in advance. It is your own responsibility to ensure this level.

All lectures, coaching sessions, and workshops for the minor will be scheduled on 3 non-changing days per week on campus. The schedule of the minor will be provided to all registered students at the start of the programme in February.

A typical week in the minor can be expected to amount to 20 – 25 hours of contact time on campus.

The minor is expected to run from the 3rd of February 2025 until 4th of July 2025.

The learning objectives mentioned above will be assessed via a combination of didactical assessment tools. We will use a combination of formative and summative assessments.

 15 ECTS = Theories and case-studies concerning the economic, political, historical and cultural context that form a background understanding of contemporary USA which can then be applied to the actual global business environment by our students. We identify 3 subjects:  The American Monetary and Financial system, American Macro-economic Principles and Policies, and American Business and Culture.

10 ECTS = One project in two parts concerning American business practices and opportunities. This is done in collaboration with companies & students from The University of Northern Texas.

5 ECTS = You will create a personal portfolio.  This portfolio is based on the ILO’s (Individual learning outcomes) defined at the start of the minor. We use Canvas and the to reflect and assess the portfolio (the USA study trip will take up part of this portfolio reflection).

After the successful completion of all components of the minor, students will be rewarded with 30 ECTS.

The minor will run every spring semester (starting in February) and runs for the entire semester (20 weeks / 30 ECTS) until end of June. The location of the minor is the Fontys Rachelmolen campus in Eindhoven. This is comfortably located on walking distance from the Central Station. For questions please contact us by email: Richard Boon (r.boon@fontys.nl).

In order to participate in this minor we ask every student to make a financial contribution to partly cover for the facilitated study trip costs. The individual student contribution will be made known during the interview process.