Experiential Learning
Students at The University of Akron College of Business have many opportunities to experience business while obtaining their degree. Many of these opportunities involve working with real clients to solve business problems that their organization is facing. Through experiential learning, students apply what they learn in the classroom to real world situations.
Honors Research Project
University of Akron, Honor's Business Students EXPERIENCE BUSINESS with Sugardale
For the students in Dr. Deborah Owens, Honors Project in Business Course, “Experience Business”, is more than a tagline. It is how students at the University of Akron learn business. This year honors students in the college are working on a yearlong project for the Sugardale brand of Massillon, Ohio based Fresh Mark. As a national supplier of bacon, hotdogs, ham and pepperoni, the students have been challenged to research and develop strategies for future growth for the Sugardale product lines.
Junior Anna Pond notes, “I have enjoyed the opportunity to work with Fresh Mark's Sugardale brand as it has further developed my relationship with my peers, enhanced my knowledge about real-world business problems, and has pushed me to critically think.”
According to Robert Hite, Fresh Mark's Vice President of Marketing and Retail Sales, “we are excited to be working with the University of Akron, College of Business. We have had many excellent interns from Akron and look forward to the innovative ideas they will be sharing with me and my team.”
Marketing Research Class
The students in Faculty Member James McKelvey's Marketing Research Class (Fall 2022) experienced marketing research by conducting a project with the University of Akron's Department of student transfers.
Kim Snowden, Sr. Assistant Director of Admissions, wanted to have more first-hand insights into how her department could better meet the needs of the 595 students that transfer to the University of Akron each year, from either two year of four-year institutions.
James McKelvey’s students learned first-hand how to develop a moderator’s guide and lead a focus group discussion to find answers to these questions:
- Why did you transfer?
- Why did you choose Akron?
- How is your current experience?
- How can we make it better?
Junior Peyton Phillips notes, “I enjoyed conducting the focus group because it gave me an opportunity to get almost a real-world experience of how they are conducted in an actual work setting. The minor setbacks we faced are actual reflections of how not everything will go right in the real world and how important it is to be flexible in situations that might not be ideal for you as the moderator. I also enjoyed the different points of view I was able to get from the different participants and how they have drastically different experiences with the transfer system here at Akron with good reasons/examples to back it up. Overall the focus group project I feel made me much more sure of myself in conducting group settings like that as the lead moderator and moving the group forward from one talking point to the next talking point.”
According to Ms. Snowden “we were very impressed by the professional reports written by each of the student teams. We are reviewing their findings and look forward to implementing some of their recommendations, to further enhance our transfer student experience, for those coming to the University of Akron.”
HR Management Consulting Project
Capstone Course 6500:471
The Management Capstone Project is a team-based experiential learning project required of all Human Resource (HR) Management majors. The purpose of the course is to develop skills in team dynamics, ambiguous field based problem solving, and high-level communication. The course provides an opportunity for students to be exposed to complicated, advanced management issues in HR. Students will research and apply modern human resource management principles, practices, and theories to the problem. The class is a culminating senior experience meant to enrich student learning in a collaborative, practical environment. The focus of the course is on strategic decision making using the students expertise in the field of HR while applying the course concepts to a real-world problem that an organization currently faces. This is a win-win scenario for our students and for the client organizations. The client benefits by obtaining valuable insights on a practical project from some of our brightest and most enthusiastic HR students. The students also benefit immensely from working with an organization on a real-world project. Usually, the students visit the client site several times during the semester to understand the project, collect data and to present their findings at the end of the semester.
This incredible experiential learning course provides the students with invaluable experience just before they finish their degree and begin their careers in Human Resource Management. Clients come to us with an HR business need that they would like the students to study and analyze. Understanding the needs of the business and how research provides evidence-based support for the students ideas, creates a true connection between research and practice. Further, an integral part of our program focuses on analytics so students learn to conduct surveys, collect data and use the information to drive their recommendations to the client. Many times, the students get hands-on experience adopting best practices for HR materials such as employee handbooks, job descriptions, compensation and benefits, training design, and other HR deliverables.
Examples of previous projects:
- Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company needed a standardized exit interview process for its North America business that was efficient, easy to access, and provided valuable insight into exit reasons (to target improvement in retention metrics).
- Babcock and Wilcox was preparing to implement a new compensation structure worldwide. Students were asked to recommend successful change management techniques and communication strategies that would help implement the new compensation structure worldwide by effectively and efficiently communicating with the employees.
- The City of Akron wanted help to reorganize their Retirement Benefit plans to better prepare the city employees for retirement. The students also compared City of Akron's retirement benefits with other similar cities and recommended best practices for implementation.
- Walmart wanted to increase internal promotions based on their selection process for Assistant Store Manager. The students developed surveys to gather data from the perceptions of different groups involved in the process. They analyzed the survey data as well as other hiring data that Walmart provided for this position to identify opportunities in the process and to provide recommendations to the Walmart HR team based on the findings. The project looked at the entire staffing process for the position, including: Recruiting, Selection, On-boarding and Retention/Turnover.
