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Trips & Traditions: QUESTees Look Ahead to Thanksgiving

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With midterm season officially upon us, deadlines for final projects coming up, and other extracurricular activities in the mix, students and staff are definitely deserving of a break. Luckily, Thanksgiving break is just around the corner! With that in mind, I spoke with some fellow QUEST students and staff to hear about their upcoming plans.

First, I spoke with Pranav Katakam (Cohort 42) to hear the rundown for his plans this year. “So, our family doesn’t do too much but we try to all get together each year and watch a movie.” Katakam also mentioned his family cooks up some delicious meals, but they’re not the typical American Thanksgiving meals like stuffing or turkey. Instead, Katakam’s family chooses to make traditional food that they grew up with. “My family’s vegetarian and we usually just eat a bunch of Indian food.” These include dishes like Puri with Channa masala, palak paneer, and rice with cumin seeds. Katakam mentions he still likes to buy a couple of American dishes as well. “You can’t go wrong with some mac and cheese and Costco pumpkin pie!” Yum, those all sound delicious! I’m definitely hungry now.

After hearing from Katakam, I reached out to a couple of amazing QUEST faculty members. Emily Marks, the QUEST program coordinator, spoke about traveling to Philadelphia. “Usually, I just see my family for Thanksgiving, but this year we are switching things up! I’m meeting up with some friends and going to the parade in Philly.” On top of that, Marks mentioned they are planning to cook a meal together consisting of turkey, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce and apple pie for dessert! She is also joining a book club with her friends which will be a new tradition for her. “Overall I’m just really excited! I’m gonna have two Thanksgivings this year: one with my family in New Jersey and one with friends in Philly. I’ve never done that before, nor have I gone to Philly so this should be really fun!”

Lastly, I spoke with a fellow QUEST professor, Dr. Bardossy, who teaches QUEST course Applied Quantitative Analysis, (BMGT/ENES 438A.) Bardossy mentioned she originally is from Argentina, so Thanksgiving was not a holiday she grew up with. However, ever since she moved to the US, she’s tried to make the most of the break and have fun with family friends. These friends are originally from Chile and Uruguay. “I met them back in university and we all got along since we were all from South America and had that in common. It’s really great to be able to have this community.” In the past, she and her friends used to rent a house in the mountains down in West Virginia to celebrate together. Now that the friends are older and have kids of their own, the new tradition is to go to their friend’s house in Milwaukee. “It’s a really fun time. All of our kids are around the same age, so they have a chance to hangout and bond together while my friends and I can catch up too.” Although they didn’t grow up with American culture, Bardossy emphasizes the effort they still put into adopting some typical American traditions. These include preparing dinner with turkey and participating in a turkey trot fundraiser race each year! 

Wow! I’m ready to meet up with family and friends now, and I’m even more excited to eat some delicious food. Until then, I have some fellow QUEST friends and faculty to hangout with; join QUEST Social next Thursday, 11/21 for a fun QUESTgiving! In the spirit of Thanksgiving, that’s something I’m definitely thankful for!

Chris & Eric’s Pickles: QUESTees Launch a New Venture

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Have you ever wanted to start your own business? Do you love pickles? Well, come try some of Chris & Eric’s Pickles on campus! I had the pleasure of speaking with Chris Moon (Cohort 42) and Hudson Grill (Cohort 42) about their new business, Chris & Eric’s Pickles.

Founders Chris Moon and Eric Bennett holding their pickle jars!

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New School Year Brings Exciting Changes to QUEST

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As the leaves begin to fall and students adjust to a new semester, there is no doubt that change is ongoing in our lives. QUEST certainly is no exception!

After speaking with Emily Marks, QUEST’s program coordinator, I learned about some very exciting changes students can expect to see throughout QUEST courses and social activities this year. “Our faculty and staff actually met for three full-day retreats over the summer to discuss feedback we’d received from students and faculty and brainstorm improvements. This feedback was about specific courses as well as the overall planning of QUEST events,” said Marks.

To start, Marks mentioned the biggest change will be in the order of QUEST courses, beginning for Cohort 43.  BMGT438A/ENES489A (Applied Quantitative Analysis) and BMGT/ENES 390H (Designing Innovative Systems) will now switch in the sequence of QUEST courses. Rather than taking 438A/489A after 190H, students in Cohorts 43 and beyond will now take 390H and then 438A in the proceeding semester. 

“We decided to swap this order as some aspects of 190H will be moving into 390H. 390H will now focus on both process improvement and systems thinking whereas in the past, 390H focused solely on systems thinking.” This change also will allow students in 190H, our introductory course, to focus on their product redesign project for the entire semester, meaning more time to flesh out their product idea and develop prototypes. 

She also mentioned improvements to the QUEST data course, 438A/489A. “Although this course will still contain a lot of the same material, we have slightly adjusted the curriculum to be more focused on data visualization and analysis rather than learning many technical skills like Python.” In the past, some students breezed through the material, while others found it extremely new and challenging. This curriculum update strives to reduce this gap and create an environment where all students feel equally knowledgeable and motivated to learn, regardless of major and prior experience. The data course will also heavily emphasize understanding the problem and the client before jumping into analyzing the data and developing solutions. 

Last but not least, Marks spoke about some upcoming changes with QUEST events. 

“We definitely want to keep most of our signature events such as our formal, the ice cream social, and the end of the year picnic. However, we are thinking of having the QUEST student organizations collaborate with each other more to increase attendance at each event. Therefore, the student leaders have been working on a calendar for all our events so that students are informed as far in advance as possible and are able to make it to the events.”

QUEST students are certainly busy and have a variety of activities to balance along with school work, so it is no surprise that attending events may sometimes be a struggle! Marks concluded with some words of excitement for the new school year. “We’re really hoping these new changes can help improve both the student and faculty’s experience this year. We are so excited to see what this new year will bring and hope to see many students soon at upcoming events planned with QUEST social and other QUEST orgs!”

The Quality Guild met this summer to discuss improvements to QUEST

The Quality Guild met this summer to discuss improvements to QUEST

 

QSocial Wrapped

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As the school year drew to a close, QUEST Social planned a variety of events to celebrate the hard work of all the QUEST students and  welcome the new students in Cohort 43 and Cohort 44 who were recently accepted to the program in March. 

A QUEST Social member, Anna Fulton, gave her own take on how these events panned out, ranging from everything from the spring formal to the senior send-off and end-of-the-year picnic. First off, Fulton discussed the formal, which was on Thursday, April 18th. 

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