Student Projects
Business Students and Faculty Set to Donate
Over 400 Hours to Help Local Businesses
Erskine Students Get Real and Get Busy
As part of the Erskine business program’s “Get Real Initiative” students and faculty help local businesses through the Small Business Support Center. Last year over 200 hours were given to local businesses, this year the program is set to give over 400 hours. These hours come in several forms, including seminars/workshops, one on one consulting and particularly through class projects and support from several student organizations.
In addition to class projects, selected students become “Student Consultants” to assist with one on one consulting, seminars, and workshops. These students get to develop deep specialized skills in such areas as in marketing, HR, or technology. Additionally, there are also several student organizations such as the Erskine Ad Group and SIFE that assist with class projects and businesses directly through the SBSC. Click here to read more about those organizations.
Who Really Benefits?
Rather than just reading about business concepts and theories, these real projects give students the opportunity to learn how business actually works. In return, clients get help from students who share their energy, creativity, and fresh perspectives. Furthermore, these student projects are unlike typical internships offered through most colleges. Since these efforts make up such a focus of the school’s curriculum to prepare students, faculty take active roles coaching students through their efforts. This also then provides local business owners access to faculty who have real experience consulting organizations through multi million dollar mission critical projects.
Lastly, a great deal of emphasis from faculty consulting is placed on coaching students through creating “actionable” advice and “tangible” results to benefit the client. This allows students to develop skills in applying classroom learning, and to then place these experiences in their portfolios which they are encouraged to create as part of the program. Read here below about specific project examples.
Specific Project Examples
- A local charter bus company came to the SBSC for some help on improving their marketing. Faculty and a student consultant helped segment and size the market in order to create an actionable marketing plan. The student consultant and Erskine Ad Group created a trial campaign that raised his profits by over 15% for that quarter. Students are now putting together a new brand and comprehensive promotions and integrated marketing communications plan to raise profits by over 20% next year.
- As part of the fall advertising and promotion class, students are broken up into teams to plan and implement weekend promotions for several local retail businesses. All teams increased profits by at least over 200% with one team improving profits by over 700%
- Local social entrepreneur wanted help to raise money for his non profit company. An operational analysis was done by students and resulted in the plan for an entirely new division of that company now called “Carolina ElderCare” which is now being incubated in the SBSC.