Teaching workers to become the bosses

A student team from UA is extolling the benefits of free enterprise to faculty at a Mexican university.

TEYA VITU
Tucson Citizen
Feb. 2, 2004

Two retail students at the University of Arizona are teaching the teachers at the University of Sonora to take the principles of free enterprise into the community.

Jane Rishel and Marc Life, members of UA's Students in Free Enterprise team, last week laid out what it takes to set up a SIFE program. They aremembers of the SIFE team that ranks No. 2 in the country out of about 800 such university organizations.

SIFE, part of UA's Southwest Retail Center, is an international nonprofit organization that encourages students to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to real-life situations.

"It looks pretty on the outside, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done," Life said. "They've read what SIFE is on a piece of paper, but they haven't seen what kind of work it takes."

The four teachers from Hermosillo weren't deterred when Rishel and Life spelled out the nuts and bolts in a presentation at UA.

"We gained the motivation and enthusiasm to take on the program, knowing that there are a lot of challenges," said Javier Carreño Knappe, director of the Center for Training, Consultation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Sonora.

Carreño was joined in Tucson by Sonora's dean of accounting, an accounting research professor and a support collaborator. The Sonora team was pointed to UA's SIFE program by Emmanuel Morales, a finance professor in Hermosillo who is in the fourth year of his doctoral program at the UA School of Consumer and Family Sciences.

Carreño said that university students understand business entrepreneurship, but that the concept of striving to be a boss rather than a worker has not trickled down to the elementary, middle or high school level.

"In Mexico, we produce employees in accounting and business administration," Carreño said. "We want to produce entrepreneurs, not to be employees but to be an employer."

That's the role a SIFE team would play at the University of Sonora. SIFE students typically help businesses and also visit schools to instill the values of free enterprise.

Carreño is eager to get a team started.

"Maybe tomorrow," Carreño kidded. "We have the enthusiasm, and we have the support of the dean (who was sitting next to Carreño)."

What Carreño needs is the approval of the university president, who is expected to take part as Rishel and Life head to Hermosillo on Feb. 26 to help recruit students and introduce SIFE to Sonora faculty.

Rishel and Life are only a few months ahead of the Sonorans in their SIFE involvement. Both joined the team at the start of the school year, and already Rishel has flowered from shy and quiet to passionately vocal.

Morales brought the Sonora idea to SIFE.

"Marc and I stepped forward to lead the project," said Rishel, a sophomore. "We thought this would be a great opportunity to learn about SIFE. We had to prepare. We had to do a lot of research. We've seen how SIFE increases the quality of life in the community."

UA's SIFE team has helped start a team in Tlaxcala, Puebla, Mexico, and mentored a new team at Arizona Western College in Yuma. Morales got a firsthand look at how the UA team functions at its home base.

"I've been able to witness what UA SIFE is able to do in the community and abroad," Morales said. "It is not only a great experience for student but a benefit to the community. I think the University of Sonora can benefit from having a SIFE team."