In the world of business, Dr. Bert Morrow is a jack-of-all-trades.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from the University of Alabama, he spent 8½ years managing large shopping centers in Texas and the Southeast. Eager to take his managerial experience to the classroom, he earned a Masters in Accounting at UA, followed by a PhD in Business Administration with a major in management and a minor in quantitative analysis from Texas A&M University. After six years teaching at Mississippi State University, he joined the BSC faculty and will celebrate 20 years on the Hilltop this fall.

Morrow’s diverse background allows him to engage students on a wide variety of subjects, from quantitative analysis for business and economics to international strategic issues to accounting and management. But perhaps his most beloved mark on the BSC Business community is his month-long European Agribusiness E-Term course, which gives 20 students a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of food production.

“When planning my first trip in 2009, I knew that I wanted to spend time in Bologna, Italy, in part because I had some contacts who I thought could put us in touch with Italian businesses in the agricultural sector,” he says. To differentiate his trip from English professor Dr. Michael McInturff’s already popular Italy E-Term trip, he decided to add another country. Skipping more conventional stops, he connected with contacts in Prague.

“I picked the Czech Republic because it wasn’t a conventional stop like Germany, England, or France, and then I made it fit within the agribusiness aspect of the trip, which ended up being kind of a square peg in a round hole,” he says. “There are lots of different Italian food products that people are aware of; for example, we visit local growers and producers of balsamic vinegar, wine, olive oil, pasta, and the world famous Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and Parma Ham, or prosciutto. But the Czech Republic is a net importer of food because they don’t grow enough to feed their country.

“Over time, it occurred to me that this offers students an interesting dichotomy and an understanding of how agribusiness affects a country’s primary diet.”

Morrow says that students get to experience this firsthand in what they eat in each country. “In Prague, everyone mainly eats pork and potatoes… and pork… and potatoes. And then in Bologna, we get authentic Italian cuisine. For example, at Ristorante Al Sangiovese, I eat tagliatelle with ragu followed by beef filet with balsamic vinegar, arugula, and Parmigiano Reggiano. At Trattoria Serghei, I’ll have tortelloni with pumpkin and roasted rabbit. And at Drogheria della Rossa, I eat whatever the owner, Emanuele Addone, wants to serve me that night.”

While the food in Prague is not as popular with students as that in Bologna, Morrow credits Prague’s local art scene, as well as the opportunity to take a day tour of Terezin, one of the largest Nazi concentration camps in the Czech Republic, with adding a unique cultural dimension to the trip.

The group also compares the modest Czech-made Skoda automobile with the lavish Italian Lamborghini. “Skoda was originally mass-produced by the Communist government so that everyone would have a car, and needless to say, it was poor quality,” Morrow says. “After the fall of the Iron Curtain, it was bought by Volkswagen and revamped. So we tour the Skoda factory to see mass production of an entry-level kind of car, and then in Italy, we tour the Lamborghini plant and see $300,000 cars that are made to order.

“It’s a really interesting contrast, and an opportunity for students to explore other areas of business interest.”

Bologna and Prague remain staples of the European Agribusiness trip, but Morrow switches out other locations on the itinerary so that each year is its own experience. The 2019 trip included Vienna, with a performance at the State Opera House.

While he looks ahead to resuming E-Term travel as the pandemic ends, Morrow believes that the BSC experience itself is what makes his students stand out. “What distinguishes a Birmingham-Southern business degree from most other places is that our students are also grounded in the liberal arts,” he explains. “They argue better, are better critical thinkers who are more worldly in their views; therefore, they go into business with a different mindset.”

This story was included in a special business and economics edition of From the Hilltop, Birmingham-Southern’s alumni email newsletter.

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