Steven Hansen stands near Lenin's Tomb and the Kremlin in Moscow's Red Square.

Steven Hansen and Prof. Sangphill Kim of the College of Management had been working together for months before attending last fall’s Global Business Conference. Their collaboration on research on McDonald’s expansion into Russia had required many conversations and e-mails.

But their arrival at the Newport, Calif., conference was the first time Hansen and Kim ever met face to face. Hansen, who lives in Utah, is a student in UMass Lowell’s online M.B.A program. Only a semester away from completing his degree, he has never set foot on campus.

He has been enrolled in the program since fall 2007, taking courses year-round while he works in information technology for a St. George, Utah-based insurance company. If all goes as planned, Hansen will complete his M.B.A. in December, capping a five-year period during which he will have finished his associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“My intention is to advance my career and I am trying to gear myself toward a chief technology officer or a chief information officer role in the high-tech industry,” says Hansen, who came to UMass Lowell from Dixie State College of Utah.

Hansen and Kim, who teaches international finance, found through their research that McDonald’s expansion into Russia offers lessons applicable to other companies considering mounting an international presence. Their findings, presented at the conference, will be published in the fall 2009 edition of the Journal for Current Research in Global Business. Working with them on research has been Prof. Alahassane Diallo of Eastern Michigan University.

The team has extensively researched the approach McDonald’s took in the Russian market since it began planning its expansion in the mid-1970s to the opening of its first Moscow location in 1990 to its current 180 locations in the former Soviet Union. The researchers identified five key factors that led to McDonald’s success: the need to thoroughly prepare before entering a new international market, forge partnerships with local experts, maintain quality, be ready to adapt to changing conditions and incorporate social responsibility into the business plan.

Hansen also aspires to eventually teach at the college level himself and, as a result, the accreditation of UMass Lowell’s online M.B.A. was one of the reasons he chose the program. He found UMass Lowell through the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the accrediting body, and was please to see it “was affordable without a lot of residency requirements or travel involved. I wanted the prestige and East Coast influence, too.”

Hansen first visited Russia when he was a student at Dixie State, combining research and cultural interests. “I’ve always been fascinated by Russia,” says Hansen, who has since returned to the country since enrolling at UMass Lowell to do additional research, including work on his paper with Kim.

He says he wants to use the knowledge he’s gained of international business through his studies and research in a technology role with a multinational company.

Understanding other cultures and their influence on how international business is conducted are among the lessons he says he learned through his research on McDonald’s.

Hansen says he believes the ability to do such extensive research as part of an online M.B.A. program is unique to UMass Lowell.

“With most online programs, you have this cookie-cutter program and don’t really get involved in research of this type,” he says, adding that other programs usually reserve those opportunities for traditional, on-campus students.

After exchanging e-mails and telephone calls with Kim over the course of their research, meeting him at the conference in California “was quite an experience,” says Hansen. “That’s the first time I actually met him face-to-face.”

The exterior of the McDonald's in Moscow's Red Square, one of the company's first location in Russia.