The McCombs School of Business hopes to connect current students and alumni from across the world with their newest project, Longhorn Global BizNetwork.

The Longhorn Global BizNetwork, a Facebook group created by the Center for Global Business, is intended to keep UT graduates in the professional world connected to the University no matter their location. The group also links these graduates with current students who find themselves looking for internship or job opportunities outside of the U.S.

“What we hope it will become is a place where … faculty, students and alumni, as well as other friends of UT, can interact with each other on issues that are related in a certain way to international business and international business education,” said Linda Gerber, Center for Global Business director.

Although the BizNetwork is a month old, the project has been in the works for about a year, Gerber said. It is run by a team of interns who have been managing and creating content for a blog called the Longhorn Global Business Network while the Facebook group was under development. Gerber said these interns are learning from Austin-based marketing-communications firm W2O.

“There’s this fantastic social media company downtown called W2O group, and the guy who is the head of it, Bob Pearson, he’s a big fan of UT,” Gerber said. “He’s basically donating an amazing amount of their talent to train our interns and help us through this evolution process. So we’ve got students that are learning so much, and hopefully these will be skills that translate into their jobs down the line.”

Although the project is part of the business school, it is not being worked on exclusively by business students. Government sophomore Alejandra Terrones said she acts as the blog manager, running the blog and creating content. She said some members of the team have to carry out multiple roles because it is so new and so small.

“I just make sure that the blog is running smoothly and that things are getting up on time,” Terrones said. “Whenever a blog is posted, we have it announced on the Facebook group as well. You also have a lot of other good possible connections, because there’s a lot of other people and networking options, things like that in the Facebook group.”