Slobomir P University established cooperation with a great number of universities in the narrower and wider surrounding among which the attention strikes the Northern Illinois University, one of the American biggest state universities, with which was signed the Contract on Long-Term Strategic Partnership on the 18th June, 2008. Both institutions signed this contract to widen and improve their educational systems, and the partnership covered four areas: student exchange, lessons, business aspect and administration. In the spirit of this strategic partnership, the Northern Illinois University sent PhD Nancy Russo, full professor and the ex-chief of the Department at the Business College of that University, to be the prorector for the international cooperation at the Slobomir P University.
One of the first results of the partnership for the foundation of the Center for business education at SPU (CPO), which is designed on the model of the Center for experience studying at NIU. CPO gives the students of the SPU the opportunity that as a consultant team work on real business problems. The sponsor of the first project was Mr. Phil Morris, alumnus from the NIU, who works at the Department for the strategic planning in McDonald’s corporation. The goal of this project was to find the best location for the construction of the fast food restaurant like McDonald’s in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to establish the local factors which would be important for this attempt.
The team composed of Jelena Lubura, Mirko Simanic, Milan Marjanovic, Mladen Marjanovic, Sladjana Kostadinovic, Tijana Milovanovic, Tanja Tomic i Vaso Arsenovic, on the 22nd April, 2009 represented the results of their project to the directory of McDonald’s corporation with the seat in Chicago. The managers of the McDonald’s were impressed with the results and stated that “the team identified exactly those parameters to which they also pay attention when they conduct the research of the new locations”. Shortly after that, the second project CPO started, whose sponsor was Mr. Drazen Savic from “Blackhawk Bank” in Rockford, Illinois. The team should have developed the system of creditability estimation which would be specific for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also to research how that system could be applied as a part of the system for client relations.
As a result of the cooperation with NIU, the students from the Slobomir P University had the opportunity to attend the lecture of a great number of guest professors, and some of them are:
– PhD Richard Born, the lecturer at the Department for Operational Management and Information Systems at the Northern Illinois University
– PhD Pol Vlajcic, professor at the Northern Illinois University
– PhD Mark S. Rosenbaum, the marketing professor at the Northern Illinois University, who held the one-day seminar in Slobomir and Doboj
– Phil Morris, who founded the Center for Business Education (CPO) of the Slobomir P University. He got his degree from the field of Operation and Information Management at the Business College at the Northern Illinois University, in Chicago. He works as a IT Research Analyst for McDonald’s.
In the following years more exchanges of the education staff are planned and student exchanges for one semester also. These exchanges would enable students to attend the lessons at the partner university, and to pay the tuition of their master university. (There are some additional expenses like insurance, health insurance, the addition for the use of technical capacities, etc.)