UCLA Extension melds trade, commerce certificate programs.

"It's a very ancient saying, but a true and honest thought, that if you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught." - Oscar Hammerstein II, "The King and I."

And that's very true, according to at least three of the dozen business executives who are preparing to teach yet another quarter of classes in the UCLA Extension program in international trade and commerce, which will offer a combined certificate in those two fields for the first time beginning this fall.

"I've taught classes at about 20 colleges in the past 16 years, and the best thing about it is the students," says Howard Goldsmith, president of Granada Hills-based Intercontinental Trade Specialists. "You know the old saw about the teacher learning from the students. Nowhere has it been more true than in international trade."

Goldsmith will teach "Fundamentals of Export Trade" at UCLA beginning Sept. 25. His class is one of the required 12 courses that students must take to ram the new professional certificate in international trade and commerce.

His classes typically attract a wide variety of nationalities, and Goldsmith says he learns from all of them.

Laurence S. Schmid, president of Strategic Directions International in Westchester, says students come from all over the world specifically to study at UCLA Extension.

"The program has become fairly well known," he says. "It's the largest extension program in the country. A certificate is not the same as a degree, but if you're from another country, maybe the distinction is lost."

Schmid, who will teach an advanced class in international business policies and strategies beginning Sept. 26, says that 17 years ago, when he fast began teaching, most of the students were Americans. But later, Europeans began to enroll.

Today, according to Karim Cherif, who is in charge of the international trade and commerce program, about 60 percent of the program's enrollees are foreign nationals who are here on student visas to study full time at UCLA Extension.

Cherif said he has no hard data on what becomes of any of the students after they leave the classes, though he noted that many of them go into business for themselves. The 12-week classes cost $275 each, plus supplies. So students spend about $3,500 or more to earn the certificate.

Schmid says that most of his foreign students come from Asia and Latin America.

"I always learn something from the students," he says, "because people bring up-to-date perspectives with them. All you have to do is figure out a way to get them to talk. People from Asia, for example, are taught to defer in classroom situations - they sit there and absorb - whereas in Europe and Latin America, they're taught to challenge."

Teisei Kurahashi, president of the KTK International, a consulting firm in Westlake Village, will tackle his third year of teaching a course entitled "Doing Business With Japan" beginning Sept. 30.

"When I'm teaching, I actually feel I'm learning," he says, "because I never before realized what is the students' perception of the Japanese market. They feel it is very difficult to penetrate, but once they understand the tradition, the cultural background and the history of business, after finishing their 12 evening classes, they feel the Japanese market is well open to them."

Kurahashi has noticed a difference between the students taking his class in downtown L.A. at the World Trade Center ("all mature students, average age between 40 and 50, and very experienced") and those enrolled at UCLA ("between 20 and 30; and half of them are really undergraduate students, so they don't have any business experience at all").

For the fast time, a course in international trade will be taught in the cyberspace campus. Originated by William E. Nix, a PaineWebber Inc. vice president, the class will teach students how to develop an online "global business presence." Among other assignments, they will write and edit advertising and marketing materials, which they will post on Word Wide Web pages.

Nix says the new electronic medium "is going to change the landscape of education and the way we do business."

He plans to post lessons on an electronic bulletin board, where students can also leave messages for him and for each other. He doesn't plan to meet personally with students, but he will confer with them by telephone.

Nix worked in a three-month trial experiment with Convene International of San Francisco, which developed the software to provide what Malcolm McVickar of Convene's marketing department calls "asynchronous education." That means students can check in whenever they want and post messages whenever they want, McVickar explains.

The students will share information with the professor and with each other.

UCLA Extension has listed 29 online courses in its fall catalog, of which 11 are in business and management. They are being provided in partnership with The Home Education Network, a private firm in Westwood.

Alan Arkatov, president and CEO of Home Education, says his company has the exclusive contract to make all UCLA Extension courses available to people at home or in the office - "whether it's online, CD-ROM, video or TV."

"We're going to pick out the best specialty schools in the country to add to (the network)," he adds. "It's pretty historic."