Article by Tanya Kapoor
Beyond encouraging students to innovate, QUEST has decided to innovate itself this semester with the addition of two new electives: Non-Profit Consulting (BMGT438Q) and Success and Failure: Building a Winning Team (BMGT498Q).
While both courses are new to QUEST, the story behind each course’s beginning is different. The inspiration for the Non-Profit Consulting class was, “like all ideas in QUEST, student centric,” said Dr. Joe Bailey, QUEST Executive Director and one of the three instructors for BMGT438Q. “Aaron Wertman, who’s currently in the class, told us we needed to work more with nonprofits, [so] we partnered with the Center for Social Value Creation. Melissa [Carrier] and Nicole [Coomber] have spearheaded a lot of the effort in designing the final version of the course.”
Professor David Ashley designed and teaches the “winning team” class: BMGT498Q. “The course is meant to understand how teams coalesce,” said Ashley. “We examine how team dynamics and team personality issues can make a team successful or unsuccessful.”
While different in subject material and in design, both courses focus on action learning. In BMGT438Q, a handful of nonprofits wanted to work with QUEST students, but the students’ decisions ultimately narrowed the list down to three: Foundations4Education, Prince George’s County Literacy Program, and the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “At the end of the course, we will have three nonprofits that will be very happy with students’ hard work,” said Dr. Bailey. “The reward is in the sense of accomplishment — not an individual accomplishment, but a sense of accomplishment within three wonderful teams.”
In BMGT498Q, Professor Ashley teaches team building through practical examples, such as election campaigns and sports teams. He uses each example to teach how a team is built successfully or how a team can decline because of muddled team dynamics. “My sense of reward lies in students understanding how the components of a team influence the results,” said Ashley, “One of the projects includes dissecting a team, and students learn how team formation can be complicated.”
In addition to completing action-based projects, students from each cohort can register in both classes. This allows for cross-cohort collaboration, something the Quality Guild has noticed before only during the QUEST study abroad trip and during IQ events. “I’ve enjoyed working with upperclassmen in BMGT438Q,” said Dulany Wagner, a member of Cohort 18. “For instance, I’ve discovered that Lucy Qian — the senior on my team — has more expertise in dealing with clients, so I’ve had a chance to learn from what she brought to the table.”
Students may have the most to benefit from various aspects of each course, but as Dr. Bailey points out, the professors have learned from smaller class sizes and action learning, too. “The restraint is this is not a traditional class. As a professor, I have to do a lot more listening and give the students an opportunity to explore and make the most of their opportunities.”