MBA - Experiential Learning Opportunities - Domestic Learning Opportunities

Darden continues to innovate in the core and elective curriculum. Students have the opportunity to explore business and leadership through immersion experiences in the United States beyond Charlottesville.

Domestic Field Experiences

Leadership Ride: Lessons in Leadership

This course explores leadership by studying a key battle from the American Civil War. The evolving strategies, command structures and decisions during the Battle of Gettysburg contain enduring messages for thinking about leadership, teamwork and decision making. Through traditional class sessions, seminar-style discussions and an intensive field experience, this course compares leadership styles, systems of authority and reactions to the ever-changing conditions on the battlefield. The course is taught by Gary Gallagher, the John L. Nau III Professor Emeritus in the History of the American Civil Way at the University of Virginia. Gallagher is the author or editor of numerous books, most recently The Union War (2011) and Becoming Confederates: Paths to a New National Loyalty (2013), he has also participated in more than three dozen television projects in the field, and is the recipient of the University of Virginia's highest teaching award.

Markets in Human Hope

The "Markets in Human Hope" elective explores audacious innovations in business and markets as viable tools in promoting human development and transforming societies. Students are asked to come up with private sector solutions for long-standing social dilemmas, such as lack of credit. Throughout the year, students create products, services, business methods, financial instruments and/or market-based systems that address the socioeconomic and structural challenges faced by the under served and disadvantaged. Part of the course includes a required field study component to face poverty head-on.