AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR FOREIGN TRADE

American Institute OF FOREIGN TRADE

My husband is going to study at the American Institute for Foreign Trade, near Glendale, Arizona, this year. A copy of his application for admittance to the Institute is lying here on my desk. In the last section of that application one is asked to give his reasons for being interested in a career in foreign trade. My husband has written: "I enjoyed my association with the people I met while overseas with the armed forces, and felt then that bringing American products to them and teaching them how to use them would be a most gratifying work. Although my work in the Speech and Drama Department of Phoenix College since my discharge from the army has been most interesting. I felt the need to get into a field which held more possibilities for me, both in personal satisfaction and in financial return. More and more I have become convinced that a career in foreign trade would supply the fulfillment of both these desires. Obviously we Americans must promote amicable business and social relationships with all nations in this time of conflicting ideologies and discord, and I would like to have a part in that promotion."

Our first acquaintance with the Institute was on a night in April, 1947. We had been invited out to hear the Phoenix College a cappella choir in concert. The director of the choir, Kenneth Hakes, had told us that the school was most interesting and that the students were a wonderful audience. We had heard about the famous Thunderbird Field II during the war years and were curious to see what it looked like. We didn't know anything about the Institute except that it had opened at Thunderbird the previous October.

When we arrived we were tremendously impressed with the beauty of the grounds, the acres of lawn and graceful elms. In the center quadrangle, surrounded by long ranch-style dormitory buildings with sloping eaves supported by rough-hewn posts, were two swimming pools, shaded by olive trees. We were told that Thunderbird Field II had been built by Hollywood money, and designed by the famous artist, Millard Sheets. It certainly bore no resemblance to the usual army post.

That evening many of the students and their wives were swimming and lying around the pool, and it looked more like a country club than a school. We laughed and said, "What a place to go to school!"

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR FOREIGN TRADE, one of the most unusual educational institutions in the country, in several short years has had great success in placing trained personnel in positions of importance with American businesses in Latin America and elsewhere. Mature students find at the Institute an air of informality which makes their studies pleasant, although the curriculum, highly specialized, demands intense concentration from morning to night. The photographs in color are by Herb McLaughlin and Earl Holbrook.

The concert was extremely fine, and we were simply amazed at the response from the students. It became one of those magic times when performers and audience reach a point of fine enjoyment together. They were a mature, well-dressed group who appreciated good things and were generous and gracious in their appreciation. As we were driving away that night I remarked rather wistfully that I wished we could go to school there and get to know those people better. Many things have happened since then. We met Mr. and Mrs. Finley Peter Dunne, Jr., and I learned much more about the school. It was founded in 1946 by the late Lt. Gen. Barton K. Yount, wartime commanding general of the. Army Air Forces Training Command, and Mr. Dunne, a former newspaper man who served on General Yount's staff during the war, and who is now secretary-treasurer of the Institute.

Their idea when the school was founded was that the United States had fallen heir to a tremendous world responsibility, and that there were far too few Americans whose education had equipped them to play a real part in meeting that responsibility. They knew that in the past Americans had often made enemies instead of friends, mostly because they did not know how to speak the languages of other peoples, and because they did not understand other peoples, and through ignorance often trod upon tender foreign sensibilities. General Yount and Peter Dunne decided to do something about it, and the American Institute for Foreign Trade is the result of that decision.

They didn't move blindly into the field of education for foreign trade. They began by consulting the top people in the biggest American companies operating abroad, companies such as General Motors, General Electric, The National City Bank of New York, American and Foreign Power Company, Goodyear and Firestone. They found out what these companies needed in the way of trained personnel, and used that as the basis for establishing the courses of study at Thunderbird Field.

Nor did they move blindly into Thunderbird Field itself. They looked at more than a dozen abandoned army bases before deciding to apply for Thunderbird from the War Assets Administration. They captured the enthusiastic interest of the principal business leaders in Phoenix. They sold their idea to the State Department, the Department of Commerce, and the U. S. Office of Education. They worked the idea into shape with leading businessmen and top-flight educators, and they descended upon Wall Street with nothing but their faith in themselves and their idea, and came away with unsecured loans from the Bankers Trust Company and the Chase National Bank. Loans from the three banks in Phoenix enabled them to make their idea a reality. Above all, they captured the enthusiasm of a little group of men and women, headed by the Institute's present president, Dr. William L. Schurz, who knew foreign trade and foreign living from long experience, and wanted to pass their knowl-edge on to the new generation. On June 10, 1946, they took possession of Thunderbird Field II, and the loan agreement came through the same day. The Field had been abandoned since June, 1945, and was a disheartening sight. In all the acres of ground and in all the buildings remained only one piece of furniture . . . a broken kitchen chair. Someone borrowed a pick-up truck and bought four desks and four chairs for $12.00 from a war surplus store in Phoenix, and they were in business. On June 16th the first announcement about the school was made and two days later

the first application for admittance arrived. By the end of the summer 3,000 letters of inquiry had been received. Out of those developed 400 applications, and 296 students were accepted for the opening of school in October, 1946.

Since that time students have been coming at the rate of 250 a year. The usual student is able to complete the course in two semesters, or a full school year of about nine months. Most students enter in September and finish in June, but some enter in February and finish the following February. Most of the students already have college degrees, and they have come to Thunderbird from every state in the Union, and from many foreign countries as well.

The Institute is certainly one of the most unusual educational institutions in this country. The three-part curriculum was designed to give students who plan to make their careers in the international field the background they need to be successful in their work. Modern languages are taught by the mimicry-memory system developed during the war, and since improved by such men as Dr. Howard W. Tessen, who heads the Language Department. Instructors in the language classes aren't teaching out of books; they are teaching their native tongue. On the staff are such men and women as Manuel and Dora Ponciano from Guatemala; Juan Frikart from the Argentine; Guilherme de Castro e Silva and Laura T. Tarquinio from Brazil; and Amalio Suarez, whose parents are Spanish.

A concentrated course in business administration methods applicable to the international field is the second part of the curriculum, and the third is called, "area studies." In lecture courses given by men who have spent years in the foreign field, students get a look into the heads and hearts of people who live in other countries. They learn the geography, economics, history, political outlook, and hopes and fears of other nations. Teaching in these two fields are such men as William S. Shaterian, freshly retired and still full of energy after 28 years as an executive in the foreign department of the National City Bank of New York; Merwin L. Bohan, thirty-year man with the Commerce and State Departments and former chief of the Foreign Service Reporting Division; Wesley Frost, former Ambassador to Paraguay, with years of distinguished service in France, Canada, Ireland, Chile and Brazil; Gail Murphy, advertising man and top sales executive in Europe and South America for many years; and Stanley Rose, who began his foreign trade career in 1895 and was still going strong when the Institute lured him from his New York office to tell its students what experience had taught him.

Another unique feature of the Institute, and one that certainly appeals to me, is that the school recognizes that the career of a man abroad depends to a very large degree upon his wife's ability to adapt herself to strange countries, to another climate, and to social customs quite different from those she has known in her home town. For that reason, wives are given language and area studies free of charge. They are trained as carefully as their husbands so that husband and wife make a strong working team when they go to another country.

But is this idea of training men for foreign trade successful? Will we be able to get a job when we get through? Those were the questions we wanted answered. And these were the answers. In the spring of 1950, when the first class was not yet out for three years, there were already more than 220 Institute graduates living and working abroad on a permanent assignment. Most of them are working for American private enter-