December 2025 saw a successful closing of a pilot project conducted by UNECON and Michigan State University. The project overviewed by the Department of Global Economy and International Economic Relations was aimed to implement joint academic case studies with the students of MSU mentored by prof. Thomas Rimer.
A total of 44 UNECON and MSU Broad College of Business students, with 28 and 16 respectively, spent two months working together on the suggested case studies.
Such format as COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) is aimed to foster joint international learning in an online environment, enabling students to work in blended teams and solve the tasks, suggested by the case studies, together. The teams were to develop and defend an export project (exporting goods from Russia to the USA or vice versa). The participants were given a specific framework with the only assumption that implied the absence of discriminatory foreign trade restrictions. The other terms and conditions such as legal and foreign profiles, features of national and regional markets, target consumers, required standards and certifications, and the overall feasibility of adapting the product to the export market had to be met to a full extent. The students were divided into 6 teams and collaborated online to address the joint tasks, to develop a unique value proposition and to define feasible export operations.
As a result, the teams developed and presented the project on the topics as follows:
- Export of natural essential aromatic oils from the Russian Federation to the United States;
- Export of Russian hovercrafts to the United States;
- Expansion of the American transnational fast-casual restaurant chain
- Chipotle Mexican Grill into the Russian market;
- Export of DIY Craft Kit (universal beverage-making kits) from the United
- States to the Russian Federation;
- Development of a joint Russian-American project to create an AI-based IT
- for the healthcare sector;
- Adaptation and export to the United States of Russian Microcontroller
- Applications managing energy systems (RUMAP).
Direct communication allowed to engage the students in an open dialogue and to facilitate implementation of the joint projects that are bound to achieve a practical implementation.
