In your life, there are some people who have a profound impact on you as an individual. It could be a grandparent, coach, or director who believes in you and sees your potential even when you don’t see it in yourself. Dr. Joe Bailey is that person for countless people in QUEST. He has been with QUEST since 2009, and I have been amazed by the number of people that he has had a profound impact on during my four years in the QUEST program. It is a testament to not only who he is as a person but also how lucky we have been to have Dr. Bailey in our community. As he moves on to his new role as Interim Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs at the Smith School of Business, I wanted to talk to some QUEST students about the impact he’s made on them.
Category Archives: QUEST News
A Fun-Filled Fall with Our QUEST Student Orgs
With the end of the fall semester, now is the perfect time to look back and see all of the exciting events that QUEST students got to partake in this semester. I had a chance to speak to the leaders of a few different QUEST student organizations to reflect with them!
QUEST students at the 8th Annual QUEST Networking Event, hosted by QUEST Corporate
Cohort 39 Jumps into QUEST at Orientation
Written by Guest Author Jeremiah Samuel
Cohort 39 at Orientation
My name is Jeremiah Samuel, and I am a senior operations management & business analytics major in Cohort 36. This fall, I decided to become a mentor for Cohort 39, which meant I got to be involved with QUEST orientation for Cohort 39! Thanks to the QUESTPress Editors-In-Chief for inviting me to do a guest story. First, I will share what inspired me to become a mentor. I realized how much the QUEST Honors Program has given me in terms of experience: working with real-world clients, having the opportunity to network, and gaining professional opportunities. For example, I was able to network with PepsiCo at QUEST’s career fair during my sophomore year. I then had the opportunity to interview for their Kickstart Leadership program where I was able to gain a myriad of information on the company.
Hello from the Editors-in-Chief!
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another exciting school year! We are your new hosts, Sona and Andrew, and we’re here to tell you all a bit about ourselves.
Get to know the new Editor-in-Chiefs! Continue reading
QUESTees Celebrate the End of A Successful Year
Despite the school year winding down, QUEST continued to host fun events for the community throughout April and May. Students from all cohorts united to attend the QUEST Formal, variety show, end-of-year celebration, and of course, the QUEST Conference.
The highly anticipated QUEST Formal was hosted on April 28th at The Hall, College Park. For many QUESTees, this was their first formal given the pandemic halting in-person events. The event was many months in the making and was spearheaded by the hard work of the QUEST Social team and the Quality Guild. Jess Yeager, a senior computer science major in Cohort 34, served as the QUEST Social co-lead this year. She explained that “though it was a lot of planning, seeing everyone come together and have fun made all of the work worth it.” Everyone in the QUEST community had a great time at QUEST Formal, eating delicious food, and taking pictures with QUEST teams, the Guild, and friends around the organization.
Cohort 34 posing for a group picture at QUEST Formal
Another awesome event hosted by the QUEST Creative team was the first annual, and highly successful, QUEST Variety Show. To organize the event, QUEST Creative co-leads Sarah D’Souza (Cohort 33) and Nakisa Rafiee (Cohort 34) reached out to different talented QUESTees with talents spanning speedcubing to musical performances. The event featured musical performances by Vivekjyoti Banerjee of Cohort 34, Mudit Mathur of Cohort 39, Bobby Chen of Cohort 37, Rae Wu of Cohort 37, and UMD Anokha (an a cappella group). Additionally, Amod Mathur of Cohort 33 showed off his Rubik’s cube skills while Sarah D’Souza of Cohort 33 and Ian Rosenthal of Cohort 36 displayed their gymnastics skills. Overall, D’Souza reflected, “It was so much fun putting on the variety show, and I hope others continue to put on the event because it’s a great way to learn from and celebrate the talent within the QUEST community.”
An additional event to wrap up the semester was QUEST’s end-of-year celebrations, which included the end-of-year pizza party and a sendoff for all of the seniors in Cohorts 33 and 34. At the end-of-year pizza party, all members of the community gathered to eat delicious catered pizza at Van Munching Hall and celebrate another great year for the program. At this ceremony, the Quality Guild presented seniors with their QUEST medals, a symbol of their completion of the program, as well as a number of awards to outstanding QUEST student leaders. Following the pizza party was the QUEST Senior Sendoff at Wunder Garten in Washington, D.C. Program Coordinator Rachel DiDonna and QUEST senior social representatives worked hard to organize an event to congratulate all of the seniors’ achievements and reminisce on great times in the program. Morgan Hoffman, a senior mechanical engineering major in Cohort 34, mentioned, “It was a lot of fun! Emilyn Hyre (a senior social representative from Cohort 34) organized a game where we had to guess if a QUEST pun was a real QUEST team name in our cohort or not,” and as such, the event was a great culmination to her QUEST career.
The final major event for the QUEST community was Cohort 35’s QUEST Conference. Nine teams presented their analysis, insights, and recommendations that they had generated for real-world clients for the QUEST capstone course, BMGT/ENES 490H. Some clients that QUESTees consulted for included Pinterest, Northrop Grumman, D&H Distributing, and Get Real Health. Team QUESTCare, which consulted for Get Real Health, won the awards for both Best Poster and Most Outstanding Capstone. I talked to Cohort 35’s Nick Bailey about his conference experience. He explained, “Before the QUEST conference, I was a little bit nervous, but once I got up on stage, I began to relax. I started joking around with my teammates while getting our jitters out right before we presented. Presenting itself was a total blur, but it was still a great time. I’m still so happy with my team’s work and proud of what we accomplished.” Cohort 35 student Jean Han added her own thoughts about BMGT/ENES 490H as a whole. “490H was challenging in the best ways, pushing me to step outside of my comfort zone and learn so much more beyond the classroom. I loved my 490H experience working with the most incredible team and client, and I am so proud of all of our diligent work during the semester!” Although Cohort 35 has completed their conference, we know that their journey with QUEST is far from over. Congratulations, Cohort 35!
Cohort 35 at the Spring 2022 QUEST Conference
In all, the QUEST community had a great few months to cap off the 2022-2023 school year. As Cohorts 33 and 34 graduate, and Cohorts 39 and 40 get ready to start, these incredible events are just a prospect of what is yet to come in the fall.
Congratulations to QUEST’s Graduating Seniors
With the end of the academic year approaching, it’s that time when we have to say goodbye to a few cohorts of wonderful seniors. I had the chance to speak to two graduating QUESTees about their favorite QUEST traditions and their plans for after graduation. Continue reading
A Sight into the Site Visit: QUESTees Visit Root3 Labs
Though I love being a student in the Smith School of Business, one of my favorite perks of being a QUESTee is exposure to diverse companies that I don’t typically see at Smith’s career fairs. I was granted such an opportunity in February when QUEST Corporate announced a company visit to a product development consulting firm called Root3Labs. Though I knew very little about engineering consulting, I was eager to learn more about the firm and the kind of client work they performed. I signed up for the visit immediately and started thinking of questions I had for the founder.
QUESTees in front of Root3Labs
Cohort 38 Dives Into QUEST Orientation
With one semester ending and a new one beginning, it is time for the newest QUEST Cohort to begin their curriculum and QUEST experience. Cohort 38 started their journey at the beginning of the semester on January 20th and 21st with their orientation to the QUEST Honors Program.
Cohort 38 on the first day of 190H
Celebrating 30 Quality Years of QUEST
Since its beginning in 1992, the QUEST Honors Program has taken in 38 cohorts of students, providing tangible professional skills, friendships, and memories to last a lifetime. QUEST students have worked with 117 unique project sponsors on 276 different projects, using problem-solving skills to develop real-world solutions to complex challenges. This year, QUEST is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and there will be multiple ways to get involved in the celebration!
Cohort 34 Presents at the First In-Person QUEST Conference in Two Years
Let’s start off by giving a HUGE round of applause to Cohort 34 for a wonderful conference last week! All of the posters and presentations were beautiful, and you could really see the hard work and dedication in every single one of them. For those of you who could not be in attendance, the bi-annual QUEST Conference was held in person, for the first time in over two years, at the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center on December 9th. The Deans from the Smith School of Business and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences were in attendance. Dean Amitabh Varshney even said a few inspiring words to all of the students. Darryll Pines, the President of the University, sent a heartfelt note to the cohort, wishing them “great success…in future opportunities” and expressed confidence “that [their] experiences in the QUEST Program will serve [them] well.”
Cohort 34 at the QUEST Conference