Although summer is often a time to recuperate from the ordeals of a busy school year, for Dr. Dwayne Ball it also represents an opportunity to continue challenging his professional skills as a professor of marketing. Ball has spent the past twelve years traveling to Lisbon, Portugal to collaborate with colleagues at the New University of Lisbon. This year Ball will once again teach the final two weeks of a graduate class in database marketing and customer relationship management.

“I developed a multicourse sequence in which I teach the final course in the sequence,” said Ball. “I developed the course in 1999 and it is part of the course that became the Marketing 350 course that I now teach at UNL.”

One of the things Ball quickly learned is that teaching a course in the United States is not the same as teaching the same course in a foreign country.

“First of all they do things differently there in a number of ways. In terms of what I teach, the use of databases and customer relationship management is different because of laws. They have different privacy laws which means there is less data and different kinds of data that is stored in customer databases. So I have to adapt to their way of doing things and that’s always an interesting challenge.”

Ball, who made his first visit to Lisbon as part of a Fulbright scholarship, credits his colleagues overseas with helping him to learn a great deal about data mining. He also sees that the American viewpoint is equally valued by the faculty and students in Portugal.

“One of the inspirations comes from the fact that what I teach is so much appreciated there. It’s not just an American perspective that’s appreciated but also an American teaching style. And I appreciate the opportunity to stretch myself into an environment that’s not entirely familiar.”

Ball will leave for Lisbon on May 24 and will also spend time continuing his research with members of the Higher Institute for Statistics and Information Management, a unit of the New University of Lisbon. When Ball returns to Nebraska he will once again bring back a new perspective both professionally and culturally to pass along to those he works with and teaches at UNL.