Note: This course listing is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a contract between CIEE and any applicant, student, institution, or other party. The courses, as described, may be subject to change as a result of ongoing curricular revisions, assignment of lecturers and teaching staff, and program development. Courses may be cancelled due to insufficient enrollment.
CIEE Study Center Syllabi
To view the most recent syllabi for courses taught by CIEE at our Study Centers, visit our syllabi site.
The CIEE core course and direct enrollment business courses are all taught in English.
Required Course
Intercultural Business Challenges in Latin America
This course provides an intellectual and experiential forum for examining cultural aspects of Latin American businesses and the Latin American market, as well as common intercultural experiences in the Latin American business sector. Students study and develop the interpersonal and intercultural skills necessary for functioning in unfamiliar, complex, and cross-cultural environments. Students examine theories of culture, cultural development, and negotiation, and through business case studies and skill-building activities, gain valuable insights and skills required for negotiating intercultural business challenges within a Latin American context. The use of case studies, team exercises, and simulations allow students to develop tools for identifying and solving problems, while at the same time learning to identify differences and similarities between their own and other cultures. This course ultimately aims to provide students with an approach that is intellectual, developmental, and experiential, and allows them to negotiate region-specific cultural issues in the business sector and develop interpersonal competence.
Required Spanish Language Course
The program requires all students to enroll in a Spanish language course, either regular Spanish language (beginner through advanced levels) or Spanish for Students of Business (intermediate and advanced levels, when offered). Students are assigned to language classes pursuant to a language placement test at the beginning of the semester. Intensive Spanish for Students of Business courses are offered on an enrollment-dependent basis. However, regular Spanish language classes are available to all students at all levels each semester.
Intensive Spanish for Students of Business (beginner to advanced levels)
These courses consist of an analysis of vocabulary and grammar related to various fields in the business world (marketing, finance, management, administration, etc.) in Spanish. Students are offered the opportunity to learn practical vocabulary that enables them to understand and analyze various types of essays, documents, and articles common to the business world. Courses are designed to enhance students’ oral comprehension and written expression in business settings. Students learn strategies for reading and producing business texts and reports. Special focus is placed on the use of technical vocabulary and proper grammar in a practical business context.
Universidad de Chile Elective Courses
Advanced Management Control
The students design a model of a management control system applied to an organization that belongs to an attractive industry in Chile. The model must satisfy specific objectives: identify their strategy and relevant relation concepts, design an integral diagnostic with management-control point of view, apply the main management-control tools, and design a specific system control that must be integrated, balanced, coordinated, and consistent with the organization and conditions.
Business Finance
This course seeks to impart the basic framework of investment decision making under uncertainty and modern portfolio theory. Starting from the Efficient Market Theory (EMT), we develop the theory of the relationship between risk and return of single securities (stocks, bonds, and derivatives) and portfolios of assets, including models such as the CAPM and the APT. We also learn how to apply these tools to create investment strategies and derive measures of performance to test these strategies as well as compare different approaches to modern investment practice. Finally, in an introduction to Behavioral Finance, we explore recent research into deviations from the EMT which have prompted much new research and empirical applications.
Corporate Finance
This course is intended for students who wish to learn and analyze the concepts and theories of modern corporate finance. It would be particularly relevant for those aspiring to careers in financial management in corporations, banks, or other financial institutions. It builds on the core finance topics covered in Finance I and Finance II. The course includes an in-depth analysis of firms’ financing choices and capital structure, valuation of corporate cash flows, institutional and legal aspects of the security issuance process, corporate dividend policy, and stock dividends and splits.
Development of Information Systems
The main objective of the course is to introduce students to the basic topics of management control. At the end of the course, students possess a comprehensive vision of the management control area. More specifically, we expect students to understand and be able to face the principal problems that appear when using the different control mechanisms. This is: planning, performance measurements, performance evaluation, incentives diagram, and organizational culture.
Economic Policy
This course explores the main challenges facing Chile’s economy today, as well as the dilemmas and limitations the economy has faced throughout the country’s recent history. The course’s focus on political economy through an historical context is based on the main theories about Latin America and Chilean economic development, and extensive discussion of evolving economic policies.
Globalization, Treaties, and Trade Agreements
This course explains the consequences stemming from globalized commercial activity on markets and local industries, given the complexity of the international political and economic system, and depending upon the characteristics, diversity, and multiplicity of cultures in which the activity is involved. At the course's conclusion, students are able to assess both the favorable and risky effects that emerge from this activity and understand how to modify the social, cultural, industrial, and local commercial business processes to achieve more beneficial results.
International Business
This course has the fundamental purpose of allowing students to develop concepts and basic tools for analysis, formulation, and management of strategies of international vusiness as a function of the objectives, opportunities, and restrictions that affect the company.
Marketing Research
This course examines the foundations of Marketing Research—the study of market information collection and analysis to support marketing decision making. This course is designed so that students can develop an understanding of the role of marketing research in organizations, technical concepts and terminology of marketing research, and marketing research process; acquire an appropriate knowledge of the main data collection and data analysis techniques; and develop the ability to identify the practical applications of marketing research to marketing and managerial decisions.
Resource Allocation and Welfare Economics
The main objective is to discuss and define the concepts of individual and social welfare, and the precise conditions that must be satisfied to reach an optimal assignation of the resources to maximize individual and social welfare. How and in what context may these conditions be accomplished within a market economy? What are the difficulties that may come up to prevent obtaining these conditions? Is there a conflict between economic efficiency and social equity? The class reviews an implementation of the theoretical derivations to the Chilean Economy.
System Auditing
At the end of the course, students are able to identify the different stages that must be considered to make a systems audit. Additionally, they are capable of knowing the main technological risks with which organizations and management are faced when they perform a systems audit.
Additional Universidad de Chile Courses
The following courses are offered every spring semester and a subset is typically offered during fall semesters.
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
Human Resource Management
International Management
Labor Economics
Managing Organizations
Monetary Concepts of International Trade
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