The first poster board message you see when you enter the Impact Lab in the College of Business is this: “Welcome to No Classrooms.” The next sign should be: “Buckle up.”
Courses for the Experiential Learning Center (ELC) and Business in Action (BIA), both housed in the Impact Lab, transform students into business consultants by providing immersive college-level learning opportunities with actual businesses. The students work in teams, roll up their sleeves, receive guidance from faculty coaches, meet with business executives, sometimes interview industry leaders, and learn firsthand about business and what it takes to be successful.
During the fall 2021 semester, BIA courses (which engage freshman- and sophomore-level students) and an ELC team (typically comprised of upper-division and graduate-level students) worked with Lakeshore Recycling Services (LRS) on five semester-long projects to resolve firm-specific business issues. LRS is a waste and recycling management company servicing multiple municipalities in addition to the entirety of the Chicago Public School system. The ELC and BIA teams received faculty coaching from BELIEF Ethics Director Neil Doughty.
The ELC team was tasked with creating a training system for existing employees, with an emphasis on career development and leadership skills. For seasoned ELC students and first-year BIA students alike, their time working in an experiential setting gave them valuable insight into developing important skills.
“The ELC is all about communication, collaboration and professionalism,” said Pierce Ugarte, a business administration senior from Oak Lawn, Illinois. “I’ve learned how to present in front of executives and how to compile research findings into a professional presentation.”
Ugarte’s ELC team created a leadership development program specific to the needs and culture of LRS. The program is meant to serve as a training tool that provides a path, as well as an organizational and enterprise values mindset for employees to learn more about and move into management roles within the company.
“The students created a section on ethics right in the beginning of the leadership program,” said faculty coach Doughty. “This experience can’t help but reinforce in their minds how important business ethics are to employers.”
Meanwhile, BIA students tackled a variety of other issues.
“My team was tasked with finding new digital technologies for LRS,” said Jared Warner, a freshman accountancy student from Ashton, Illinois. “We suggested new software, as well as ways to build a new website, app and more. We also found qualified freelancers skilled in designing new websites and other technologies. As for myself, I was surprised by the amount of hands-on experience in the class. My presentation and public speaking skills have improved dramatically because of all the official presentations we were required to make.”
By semester’s end, LSR received five deliverables: a comprehensive leadership development program from the ELC team and formal sets of recommendations from the BIA teams to address non-mission critical problems.
“Based on the presentation and information, we have an actual, functional training program,” said George Strom, vice president of municipal services for LRS. “I really enjoyed the program, as well as the students who worked with us.”
“Our partnership with Lakeshore Recycling Systems gives NIU business students the opportunity to learn business by doing business,” said College of Business Dean Balaji Rajagopalan. “We presented our students with five LRS business challenges in fall 2021 and they rose to the occasion. They presented LRS with a variety of creative, research-driven recommendations and gained valuable problem-solving, communication and teamwork skills along the way. We appreciate LRS’s tremendous support of experiential learning in the NIU College of Business.”
by S. Serpe, Journalism ’20, 2L NIU Law, digital marketing graduate assistant for the College of Business Impact Lab; editorial oversight by M. De Jean, director of marketing, NIU College of Business
