As the world cel­e­brates In­ter­na­tion­al Youth Day dur­ing the month of Au­gust grad­u­ate stu­dents, en­rolled in the Mas­ter of Sci­ence in In­dus­tri­al In­no­va­tion, En­tre­pre­neur­ship and Man­age­ment (IIEM) pro­gramme of The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), are set on mak­ing their own mark by uni­ver­sal­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Through the medi­um of blog­ging, they speak about their own ex­pe­ri­ences en­coun­tered while on an In­ter­na­tion­al Study Tour to Mi­a­mi, Flori­da, un­til Au­gust 21.

The stu­dents' time in Mi­a­mi is to be well doc­u­ment­ed as they use the in­no­v­a­tive method of blog­ging to cap­ture facets of their trip. The In­ter­na­tion­al Study Tour is an in­te­gral part of the IIEM pro­gramme, as it pro­vides grad­u­ate stu­dents with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to study the op­er­a­tions of glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness­es, while in­cor­po­rat­ing the learn­ing out­comes from the pro­gramme, re­search and busi­ness in­ter­ests of the stu­dents.

The blog is eas­i­ly ac­cessed by log­ging on to http://u.tt/blog.

In prepa­ra­tion for the tour, a de­brief­ing ses­sion was held at the Uni­ver­si­ty's O' Meara Cam­pus. Fea­tured speak­er was Prof An­tho­ny T Bryan, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi and se­nior as­so­ciate in the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS). Prof Bryan en­cap­su­lat­ed much of the dy­nam­ics of the US/ Trinidad and To­ba­go re­la­tion­ship in his de­liv­ery, Dis­tant Cousins–The US and the Caribbean.

Al­so on hand to give their own per­spec­tive on holis­ti­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ing self, school and coun­try, were crick­et and foot­ball leg­ends Cuth­bert Gor­don Greenidge and Ever­ald (Gal­ly) Cum­mings, both of the Uni­ver­si­ty's Acad­e­my of Sports and Leisure Stud­ies. Fi­nal words of en­cour­age­ment were im­part­ed by Prof Ramesh De­osaran (Emer­i­tus), pro­gramme pro­fes­sor and act­ing pres­i­dent of UTT. A to­tal of 21 UTT grad­u­ate stu­dents have em­barked on the In­ter­na­tion­al Study Tour.