Back in 2018, a small group of Boise State students headed to Taiwan for the summer with Jack Marr, clinical associate professor of management for the College of Business and Economics. They journeyed across the world to spend 11 weeks learning about the interplay between cultural, political and economic factors in Asia. The trip was a success. Now, Asia BizTech is recruiting students and preparing for its fifth trip to Taiwan next summer.
Rhett Suciu, who took part in the 2018 trip as an MBA student said, “Every experience I had in Taiwan from navigating transportation to learning about business structure fed back into how I conduct business in the U.S. today.” Suciu is now the vice president of operations for a medical staffing company.
“I had traveled abroad before, but what stuck out to me about that trip was how the combination of going to school and working in another country intermixed,” Suciu said. “Every day you’re constantly challenged and compelled to deal with these new interesting situations. When we got back we’d grown three years in three months.”
And that’s just the sort of growth Marr hoped the students would experience.
“The program is intense with opportunities for students to learn and grow at every corner,” Marr said. “Not only do the participants have to be good students, but they have to be able to thrive with a group of their peers in a foreign country for 11 weeks. Through four cohorts over seven years, everyone has been transformed in deep, lasting and positive ways.”
For the first four weeks of Asia Biztech, students take Chinese language and culture classes at a level appropriate to them (from beginner to fluent) at Providence University in Taichung, focusing on applied Chinese in the workplace. The cohort then spends a week meeting Taiwanese business, government and technology leaders. During the final five weeks of the experience, the students complete intensive internships at Taiwan’s top global firms. Throughout the experience there are multiple opportunities to participate in both organized and self-led activities around Taiwan and even to neighboring countries around the region.
Leveraging a longstanding relationship
Although the Asia Biztech program’s first trip was in 2018, the program’s roots extend much further back. Before coming to Boise State, Marr spent 15 years of his career in China, Taiwan and Japan as a trade diplomat and consultant. Asia Biztech was his idea. After a Taiwanese trade delegation visited Boise in 2016, Marr started thinking about creative ways for Boise State to partner with Taiwan. Why Taiwan? Idaho has a unique relationship with the country.
“Idaho’s relationship with Taiwan is one of the largest state-to-country partnerships that exists,” Marr said. “Taiwan is Idaho’s second-largest trade partner after Canada. We export everything from electrical equipment to food and agricultural products. In fact, Governor Brad Little is going on a trade mission to Taiwan this November. Thanks to Asia Biztech, Boise State was one of the first universities to seek a partnership with Taiwan back in 2018. We have a solid state-to-state, business-to-business, university-to-university relationship.”
Asia Biztech students have received generous support from Taiwan’s Huayu scholarship from the Taiwan Ministry of Education, which helps subsidize Chinese language studies at Providence University, and the Taiwan ThinkTank has also helped fund the program. Biztech has been featured in Taiwanese media multiple times, and Boise State and Biztech have a deep partnership with Providence University, which also dates back to the origins of the program.
Building a business foundation
Elle Relyea, a pre-business major interested in international business and finance, was part of Asia Biztech in 2024, the summer after her freshman year. In her pre-trip reflection paper she wrote: “As a freshman, going on sophomore, I have only taken two business classes. Not knowing much about business itself and then having to expand that to the entire world has been challenging in my studies. During Asia Biztech, I am excited to go into those professional meetings and the internship and try to learn more about business to help me with my future classes and career.”
The trip fulfilled that hope and more. Not only did Relyea meet business leaders and see factories in operation, but during her internship at robotics firm NEXCOM, she worked on international business marketing projects.
“I was scared going into it, considering I hadn’t had many business classes, but I got so much insight on what it means to be in business,” Relyea said. “While I was in Taiwan, I remember calling my dad one night so excited to tell him about what I saw that day and how I was looking forward to the business classes I would take in the future. The trip gave me firsthand experience. I would be able to relate my future classes to things I saw instead of thinking ‘One day, I’ll be able to relate to this.’ And just like I told my dad, the classes I’m taking now relate to my experience with Asia Biztech. I’m so grateful.”
The 2024 trip was the fourth for Asia Biztech after the program was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic. The program has 45 alumni.
Past Asia Biztech cohorts included many business and engineering majors with a handful of political science and urban studies majors. For interested students, Marr’s INTBUS 388 Asia Biztech course offered in spring 2025 is a prerequisite for participation, and previous education in the Chinese language is a plus.
Read more on the Asia Biztech webpage. To be invited to the first informational meetings later in the semester, fill out the indication of interest form on the Asia Biztech application page.