Education

Out of the classroom, into the real world

Denver Business Journal - by Bruce Goldberg

There’s talking, and then there’s rolling up your sleeves and really working.

Students can sit in classrooms all day long, their attention perhaps drifting while a professor drones on. But getting hands-on experience out in the field leads to “ah ha!” moments and hastens up the learning curve.

And if that field work produces some long-lasting good in the community, so much the better.

That philosophy drives the “social capital projects” (SCP) program at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Each MBA student must work on an SCP — a sustainable project that benefits the community in the long term.

“We’re trying to build social capital in the community by doing good, not just concentrating on business skills that equate to making a profit,” said Barbara Kreisman, assistant dean at Daniels. “What we find with the students is that so many of them may be in positions where they aren’t finding satisfaction in what they do, and social capital projects enable them to do something outside of themselves and their world of work.

“Therein lies the satisfaction of doing well by others.”

The SCP program has produced some impressive results. A sampling:

• Oakwood Homes — This is the 15th year that students in the Franklin L. Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management have worked with Oakwood Homes to build a home from start to finish. Each home project includes cash donations to a scholarship fund at the Burns school, and to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver.

• KidsTek —Two groups of Daniels’ executive MBA students have helped grow the KidsTek program. KidsTek is a nonprofit organization that provides technology teaching in after-school programs in 15 schools in the Denver and Aurora school systems.

• Lockheed Martin Space Systems — Seven students from the MBA program, plus one more from DU’s Sturm College of Law, did enormous amounts of research of the alternative-energy market for the aerospace giant. Then they presented their report to senior executives and business-group heads of the company.

Building an Oakwood home

“It’s a great capstone to their college career, where they get to put into application what they’ve learned through their college career,” said Pat Hamill, CEO, president and founder of Denver-based Oakwood Homes, and a DU graduate. “Many students will tell you it’s the most important thing in their college careers.”

Oakwood employees who graduated from this program do most of the teaching; two examples are Sean Winkler, director of purchasing, and Frank Walker, director of operations. “I call it ‘Pioneers hiring Pioneers,’” Hamill said, adding that Oakwood usually hires one or two students from each homebuilding class.

Vinny English, a senior who’s studying real estate and construction management, worked on this year’s house, a two-story model that has 1,650 square feet and a two-car garage. It was slated for completion in mid-May. A class of 16 was assigned to the project, and he’s one of the two class co-presidents. The class formed committees for finance, construction and marketing.

“It becomes a great learning process for someone in my position because I’m managing all aspects, and I’m a team member of all groups and a manager of all groups,” English said. “It’s really invigorating and rewarding. I can’t tell you the experience it gives me, and the leverage in job interviews. I can say, ‘I may not have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars for this company in the past, but I’ve been in the position of doing all the aspects.’”

The students are indeed hands-on in all aspects of building the new house. One class member is on the construction site for 40 hours a week, supervising the work with Oakwood’s guidance. The finance committee tracks purchase orders, including donations from Robinson Brick and Kohler, cash flow, paying subcontractors — everything that a financial employee does at a construction company.

“Oakwood takes our schedule out of the system and lets us manage the process,” English said. “If we make a mistake, they help us to solve it.”

Hamill and Stu Stein, a lecturer in the Burns school, originated this program. “It’s a win-win-win situation for all parties,” Stein said. “Students are provided with a laboratory like no other program that I know of in the country. Students make most of the decisions, within certain parameters, about building a single-family home. They work in the sales office, the design center and on site.”

Teaching computer skills

MBA students who also work in the tech field have brought major learning opportunities to schools by working with KidsTek.

One example is Tim Brunn, 44, Cisco’s senior manager of world distribution, based in Centennial, who’s earned an MBA degree from Daniels. His SCP team discussed “what could we do to help Colorado kids get into technology that’s sustainable, that has some legs behind it,” he said. They chose to work in an “underserved” community.

So they set up the Cisco Networking Academy at Montbello High School, where students can earn a networking associate industry certification — and learn there’s a whole world of opportunity in this industry.

“We wanted to show kids, this is where you can go with this,” Brunn said. “We demonstrated what’s possible if you learn technology.” Ten students enrolled, and the course will end with the school year.

Another team, with Sun Microsystems employee Paul Gehring on it, worked with the Broomfield company to set up an Oracle program at Manual High School. It began in September, and focuses on system administration of any computer system based on Sun’s back-office software.

Brunn remains involved, working on a program to place students in IT jobs eventually.

“It’s extremely challenging coursework, and they have to work really hard,” said Andrew Bissland, program director for KidsTek, which started 10 years ago as the Colorado Technology Community Foundation (CTCF). “Some of these kids may or may not be college-bound; we’re almost treating these classes as vocational classes. But the idea is that there are kids out there that have this natural tech bent, and we want to bring this service to them.”

He also praised the MBA students for helping to find program funding, and for helping KidsTek make connections with tech companies and foundations.

“We think the high school program is the most successful thing that we do,” said Pat Maley, a partner with Wiegers Capital Partners and a CTCF founder. “I think technology can be a major bridge to help people get out of difficult situations and have a much better life.”

Researching business opportunities

The Lockheed Martin project differed from the others in that the company didn’t specify a desired result; it just wanted an independent perspective about where it could enter the renewable- and alternative-energy markets.

Its traditional customers — such as the federal defense and energy departments — “have their orders to cut back on fossil fuels and increase consumption of alternative energy,” said Brian Zimbelman, business development analyst at the space systems arm south of Denver. “I was impressed by the amount of data the students were able to sort through.”

Wilbur Deck was one of the eight or nine Daniels students who worked the project last summer. After several weeks of research, a trip to the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, a chat with Xcel Energy about its Smart Grid project in Boulder, and more, “We gave a presentation to Lockheed Martin on the state of the market, what the opportunities were, what some companies are for potential partnering opportunities or acquisitions,” said Deck, who also works in DU’s marketing department.

“It was a good experience working as a team and learning a lot about the renewable-energy industry and how to identify the business opportunities that are there.”

Ron Rizzuto, co-director of the Reiman School of Finance at Daniels, said of the SCP programs, “It’s a great experience and a great demonstration of, not only does Daniels College talk a good game, but it also puts faculty and student efforts against some important problems.”


bgoldberg@bizjournals.com


All contents of this site © American City Business Journals Inc. All rights reserved.