A Visit to Mercy Hospital

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Article by Varisha Parikh (Q18)

On February 3rd, 2012, a group of QUEST students accompanied by Dr. Bailey and Nicole set out in two mini-vans for Mercy Hospital in Baltimore. The purpose of this visit was to gain a better understanding of the infrastructure and management of a large hospital facility. The aim for the attending QUEST students was to be attentive to the presentation and facility tour in order to scope out potential for a 490 project.

Upon arriving at Mercy Hospital, everyone was stunned by how massive the facility was. The hospital spanned multiple buildings with a sky walk and was (obviously) amazingly clean. The day began with a presentation by the CEO and executive board of the hospital, Tom Mullen. The presentation described the infrastructure of the hospital as well as the business plan and financial characteristics. This presentation was particularly interesting because it highlighted how the many facets of the hospital must work together to ensure proper care and efficiency. The necessity for interdisciplinary collaboration was made evident. Also, the presenters described how the hospital management adapts their plans in order to accommodate a variety of patients and their unique healthcare needs.  In addition, they described a variety of quality tools and measurements used to facilitate hospital management.

The procedural update screen, one of Mercy Hospital's newest innovations

Following the presentation, the CEO and executive board took the QUEST group on a short tour of the new additions to the hospital. During the tour and description of the facilities, it was evident that each aspect was catered to patient comfort and healthcare provider convenience. For instance, in the new hospital suites, the room structure provided more room for family members, increased support for feeble patients, and ample space for medical preparation. QUEST students learned how these aesthetic aspects are also a significant aspect of patient care and experience. Another example is the new computer monitors in the surgery waiting room which indicates to the family of patients the status of their loved ones’ surgical procedure. After completing the tour, QUEST students presented the CEO and executive board with gifts in order to show appreciation for their time and effort.

The trip to Mercy Hospital provided QUEST students with a unique experience to see how hospitals must also implement quality tools, management, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovative infrastructure. On the ride back to College Park, Dr. Bailey encouraged students to brainstorm ideas for a possible 490 collaboration with Mercy Hospital. As healthcare moves forward, the necessity for continual process improvement and innovation becomes more important. And who knows process improvement better than QUEST students?

QUEST students pose with Mercy Hospital hosts

QUEST Alumni take part in Krispy Kreme Challenge

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Article by Alex Bansleben (Q18)

The Krispy Kreme challenge. Not too many people have heard about it, but it is a competition growing in popularity. The first time I was told about what the challenge entails, I almost started getting stomach cramps. The Krispy Kreme challenge is an annual charity event held in several locations around the country. Two of our very own QUEST alumni—Brian Daisey (Q16) and Jeffrey Lue (Q16)—participated in the challenge at the beginning of February in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Essentially, participants in the challenge combine two activities which (to me, personally) sound equally unpleasant: running, and eating a dozen donuts. The challenge is to run two miles to a Krispy Kreme store in Raleigh, eat a dozen donuts, and run back within an hour. All proceeds from the event are donated to North Carolina Children’s Hospital.

Brian Daisey (Q16, middle) with friends Jason Kramer and Jimi Gipple

Jeff Lue explained that his training routine was to run, eat donuts, and run again to “prepare his stomach for the pain he was going to unleash unto it”. Brian ran approximately 5 miles every day, but was only able to eat 3 or 4 donuts during training.  Both Brian and Jeff agree that the easy part of the challenge seems to be running to the Krispy Kreme store. The REAL challenge comes with eating the donuts! Jeff’s strategy was the “smashing approach”, which involved cramming 4 donuts into a “dense megadonut”.  Brian’s strategy was to stack 3 donuts and smash them into a “disk of sugar glaze and dough”! As I’m writing this, my stomach is getting queasy.

Donut boxes piled as evidence of the challenge

Unfortunately, Jeff missed the challenge 1-hour cutoff by less than a minute, and Brian was not quite able to master (or muster?) his donut-eating-and-running skills either. It looks like they will have to try again next year! In the meantime, congratulations to both participants; it is great to see QUEST alumni participating in such a unique event!

 

Alumni Profile: Jessica Danyluk (Q4)

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Article by Kathryn Weiland (QUEST GA)

Jessica Danyluk is a prime example of a world traveler. Having grown up in Easton, Pennsylvania, Jessica has launched herself far from her small-town roots in order to embrace a life of international travel. Her exciting career path, accompanied by her zest for embracing the unknown, makes her the ideal candidate for this month’s alumni profile.

Jessica joined QUEST (known then as IBM/TQ) as an international business and French major and a member of Cohort 4. One of her first memories of QUEST relates to her first day in BMGT190, which was held in a large teaching theater with computers at each station. “Before my first QUEST class, I didn’t know how to use Microsoft Windows, and here I am sitting at a computer station and I had no idea what to do,” Jessica remembers. “The classmate I was sitting next to, Barry Kaplan, noticed that I was struggling and helped me get through that first class. It was very humbling to have come out of high school thinking I know what I’m doing and realizing I still have a lot to learn.” Since that day, Barry and Jessica became good friends and stayed that way throughout college. Jessica also made another life-long friend in QUEST, Saquib Chowdhury, which allowed her the unique opportunity to visit his home country of Bangladesh after college.

Another way in which QUEST helped Jessica was through her participation in the BMGT490 capstone project. Her role on that project was to work as the liaison between her team and their corporate partner. During a career fair in the spring before graduation, Jessica had a mini-interview with some representatives from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). Coincidentally, the prospective job involved working as a liaison, and once Jessica mentioned her experiences in QUEST to the interviewers, the meeting took on a whole new life. “My experiences with the QUEST capstone project was the thing that got them interested in me,” says Jessica. She accepted a full-time job with the SEC following her graduation in May 1999, where she worked as a liaison for the Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA offices.

After spending six and a half years at the SEC, Jessica was ready for a change, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. Up to that point, she had been living in Annapolis, Maryland with a roommate who had just relocated to Sydney, Australia. Shortly after the move, Jessica flew to Sydney to visit her friend and had an unexpected revelation: she fell in love with Sydney, and soon was packing her things to relocate permanently to Australia. “I was there for several months, traveling around the country and having a great time, when finally I started to interview for jobs,” Jessica says. She accepted a position at Goldman Sachs working in Compliance covering Australia and New Zealand, and remained there for approximately five years. Although she still loved Sydney, Jessica felt herself itching for another change. After considering several possible locations, she found herself relocating to Winchester, England in June 2011. Each day, Jessica rides the train about an hour into the city to her job at Macquarie Group, a firm specializing in international banking and finance. Although she only has two months in her current role under her belt, she reflects on her experiences thus far: “I’m really enjoying it, but it’s definitely the hardest job I’ve ever had, aside from the fact that I’m new and still learning the ropes. I work in investment banking compliance, covering Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, so it can be high-risk work with a lot more responsibility than my previous roles.”

When asked if she had any advice for current QUEST students, Jessica pauses for a while to figure out what to say. Finally, she realizes that her own experiences provide the best advice. “Don’t be afraid to move overseas. It’s really a wonderful experience. Your family might not appreciate it at first, but once they realize how exciting it can be, they will be supportive. When I lived in Annapolis, I was very settled; I owned a house, and I had my responsibilities there, but once I realized that I wanted to move to Sydney, I was able to just pick up and go. It is so easy to stay in the house you have always lived in, in the town you are comfortable in, but it’s really worth going and seeing the world.” When asked if she would like to relocate elsewhere in the near future, Jessica says that she is happy where she is now. Although she doesn’t have any plans to move back to the states, she is leaving her options open and seeing what opportunities may come her way.

When Jessica is not busy working, she enjoys running, and obviously, traveling. She also sailed frequently while in Australia, but hasn’t had the opportunity to enjoy that hobby since moving to England. True to her friendly nature, Jessica ends our conversation by making a very generous offer: “If anyone decides to travel to England in the near future, please get in touch with me! I would be happy to make travel recommendations and even show them around.” And considering her connection with QUEST, her knowledge of international travel, and her warm personality, walking the streets of London with Jessica for a day sounds like it would be time well-spent.

2011 Senior Conference Projects

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Article by Sophia Wu (Q18)

Members of "Solar Solutions" discuss their storyboard with fellow students

Amazing food, family and friends, and the light buzz of pleasant conversation.  Sounds like a party you’d like to attend, right? Well, this party is none other than the famous QUEST Senior Conference. Whether they are a QUEST corporate partner, an alumnus, or a current student, the Senior Conference is always an occasion everyone looks forward to. Each fall, the QUEST community comes together to celebrate the accomplishments of their senior QUEST students and to hear about their semester-long consulting projects.

Last fall, the students of Cohort 17 were split into 12 teams and worked with a multitude of QUEST’s professional partners, including: ATK Missiles Projects Group, ATR, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bowles Fluidics, ezStorage, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Time Warner Cable and Unilever. Each team worked with these clients to provide recommendations for different areas of their company.

CLIENT: TEAM: GOAL:
ATK Missiles Project Group Interception To reduce the cost of product production by 20-25% while meeting expectations of potential customers.
Space Ventures To assist ATK expand into commercial markets through the creation of a competitive advantage.
ATR Solar Solutions To identify methods to successfully penetrate the residential market with efficient solar energy solutions.
Booz Allen Hamilton Terraficiency To decrease the amount of time spent on two different program health reports by developing a one-time data entry process for both reports.
Bowles Fluidics H2Optimized To determine the most optimal packaging container for Bowles’ current internal shipping process.
ezStorage eZential Capital To create a revenue management system aimed to maximize revenue in ezStorage’s facilities.
Lockheed Martin LM United To create a supply chain metric tool that would improve communication and organizational performance between Lockheed Martin’s different repair depots.
 SAIC  Secure Solutions To create a web portal that will help develop a better community throughout Maryland by keeping the Cybersecurity workforce updated about important information.
A.I.deas To determine whether a machine can identify specific ideas within an article and use them to predict impending financial crisis.
Time Warner Cable OptimalQ To adapt TWC’s current internal processes to a new content management system and provide a 5-year vision to increase the value of RoadRunner.com to its consumers.
Unilever Perfect Spread To improve customer satisfaction of Unilever’s soft spreads by reducing the number of complaints related to foreign material.
ECOnomic To assist Unilever in their goal to expand their business while being environmentally friendly by identifying methods of energy conservation.

With the completion of these great projects, Cohort 17 has once again proven that the QUEST community is indeed made up of the best of the best. Congratulations Cohort 17, and good luck with the rest of your endeavors!

“This Winter Break…”

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Article by Jacob Wilkowsky (Q19)

After a long semester capped off by grueling finals, winter break provided some much needed relief to QUEST students ready to let loose. With five weeks to burn, some QUESTers enjoyed the comfort of their couch while others crossed continents. Below are some blurbs from QUEST students describing what they did over break.

Aditya Sridhar – Cohort 19: “I spent the majority of my winter break working for Baltimore Gas and Electric.  My project over the winter was to come up with better ways of displaying the maintenance data over the past 10 years.  Since the company is going through a merger in the next couple of months, my work over the winter/summer should be helpful for business leaders to make decisions about changes in company structure and processes.  I also discovered an interesting Game Theory course in iTunes University taught by a professor at Yale and completed about a third of that course.  The rest of the time, I was either spending it with my family, or hanging out with friends.  Overall, it was a busy winter, but I had a lot of fun!”

Marc Kramer- Cohort 17: “This winter break, I had the amazing opportunity to volunteer in Israel for the Jewish National Fund. We primarily focused on gentrifying the Negev (or desert area) of Israel and making it both more sustainable and livable. About 2/3 of Israel is desert and since Israel is a country about the size of New Jersey, it is important to try to utilize all the land possible. In doing so, we helped to create gardens and drip irrigation systems for farms and picked fruit and painted houses for the less wealthy. It was really rewarding to see the profound impact a small group of college age kids could have while working together toward a common cause. We helped to turn a barren useless area of land in the desert into a livable community with thriving vegetation. Afterwards, I extended my trip and traveled to various parts of Israel such as Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, and Ashdod. It was a really rewarding trip.”

Marc volunteers on his winter break in Israel

Tom Sless- Cohort 19: “I spent my break at home in Baltimore. I worked for a few weeks in Columbia Mall selling calendars. Ask me what the date is!”

Dave Rosen- Cohort 18: “I went home to New Jersey for my break. It was nice to be with my family and see friends. I also spent time in a nursing home near my house volunteering. It was a really rewarding experience and I had a lot of fun.”

Sara Bleistein- Cohort 19: “Over the break, I was pretty busy traveling. I spent a total of 5 days at home in Damascus and the rest of the time abroad. While I was home, I hung out with friends and family and got prepared for my travels. At the end of December, I went to Aruba for a family vacation with my parents, brothers, and grandparents. After coming home for a few days, I left again to spend a day in Los Angeles, California with one of my cousins during my layover on my way toAustralia. I spent two weeks in Australia on a short-term study abroad program through the business school, and it was the most amazing place I have ever been in my life. I was able to play with koalas and kangaroos, climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge, and go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.”

Mark Leybengrub- Cohort 19: “Over break, I vacationed in Florida with my family. There, I relaxed on the beach, went fishing, and ate a lot of good food. When I came back to Baltimore, I had my wisdom teeth taken out. Wasn’t the most fun experience, but I ate a lot of ice cream.”

Jacob Wilkowsky- Cohort 19: “Over winter break, I mainly relaxed at home and hung out with friends. I also worked for my uncle walking dogs. I walked a lot of cute pooches.”

Aaron Rubenstein- Cohort 19: “This winter break, I enjoyed the first couple weeks by traveling and relaxing.  The highlight was probably New Years in NYC; that was a blast!  For the last few weeks of break, I was privileged to help Dr. Sean Humbert in the Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory in UMD. There, I performed research on the kinematics and control of flapping insect wings, (i.e. we want to figure out how bugs control where they fly!).  I used state of the art film equipment to define important parts of the insect in 3D space and a computer program that analyzed the motion of the wings.  The ultimate goal of the research is to mimic and replicate an insect’s flight control pattern on a micro air vehicle (a.k.a. a small, flying robot bug). It was a very exciting break!”

Student Profile- Special QSO Edition

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Article by Dathan Scott (Q18)

Editor’s Note:  Over the next few issues, QUESTPress will be having a special Student Profile column. Each month, we will be highlighting 1-2 new members of the QSO board. Enjoy! 

Welcome back, everyone! As you all should know by now, a new QSO board was elected for the new year, and we are looking to build on the successes and achievements of its predecessor, or QSO 2011 as I will call them. QSO 2011 fostered, completed, and maintained a number of great things, keeping everyone in the QUEST community informed and active in their involvement and communication with each other. Who could forget great events like QUEST Laser Tag, the QUEST Alumni Dinner, and the QUEST Barbeque with the showdown of the inflatable sumo suits! Plus, I know we all remember the start of the great tradition that is the QUEST Formal. Students, faculty, and alumni all were able to come out and have a great time at these events. Thanks to a record turnout of students at the board member elections last December, a new QSO board was chosen. So who were the selected few to carry on the torch and be known as QSO 2012?

Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the new members. Ladies and gentlemen, your QSO 2012.

President: Sara Bleistein – Cohort 19

Madame President Sara Bleistein has what it takes to lead such a great team of students. The accounting and finance major delivered a great speech during the QSO elections, highlighting the major ideas and the direction that she would like to see QSO and QUEST go. She is a proud member of the Alpha Chi Omega women’s sorority and is in the Honors Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program. This may hint to what the future may hold for her; I’m thinking President and CEO, yes?

Sara has worked for Shutterbooth as a sales representative, and at Bentley’s on Route 1. Being the great young woman that she is, Sara gives a lot of credit to her two older brothers who have been her role models from a young age. She gets things done in the classroom, obviously, but something you might not have known is that she is a huge sports fan. She loves UMD sports, especially basketball, and is a diehard Orioles and Ravens fan. She plays sports like volleyball, softball, and flag football, so do not take her lightly at all.

Her goal is for QSO to have a more active role in uniting and supporting the QUEST community.  In the words of a true leader, Sarah reflects on QUEST: “Our community is full of potential because all members have so much to offer each other and the organization as a whole, and I want to work with the other members of QSO in order to aid the members of our community in reaching their full potential and, in turn, allow QUEST to reach its full potential.” She also adds that it is the job of the QSO to help improve the transparency between QSO and the entire QUEST community. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If you ever need her, she’ll be happy to provide you with her number. Hit her up on Facebook or you can probably catch her at Chipotle almost every day.

BMGT490H: An Exercise in Teamwork

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Article by Ryan Murphy (Q17, of Project of the Year team “A.I.deas”)

Throughout the Fall ‘11 semester, I had the pleasure of working with Jason Felder, Jeff Jacobs, Shiran Beroukhim, and Avi Prince on an interesting 490 project dealing with artificial intelligence and, specifically, machine reading. The project itself was interesting, novel, and, initially, completely foreign to me. In fact, at first, none of us (except for Jeff, who joined the squad a few days late) really knew much about machine reading or ontologies or DARPA or any of the elements of the final project that we were going to be working with. But, that proved unimportant.

The most important element of our project was our team. Like machine reading, I knew nothing about any of our team members before the project began. I was meeting all of them, except for Shiran, for the first time when we had our initial meeting. If I had the opportunity, I would have chosen to work with friends. However, I am glad that I never had that option as this was easily the best group project experience that I’ve had. Indeed, I learned a great deal about machine reading, artificial intelligence, ontology construction, and technology research methods, but I feel that I learned much more about teamwork.

Of course, during the semester there were times when we disagreed, times when we had to stay late working, and times when we wanted to kill each other. There were many more times, as I remember, that we spent joking, making fun of each other, and making light of situations. It was this mixture of humor and hard work that ultimately made us a cohesive team. It’s this lesson that I think will stay with me for sometime to come – ‘working’ with people on something doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy it. In fact, if you don’t enjoy the people that you work with, it becomes quite miserable. That being said, I think it is extremely important to go into group projects like this with an open mind and to strive to make the most of the experience. If I hadn’t adopted this attitude, I probably would have had a terrible semester, and I definitely wouldn’t be able to call the four other team members my friends.

A.I.deas, Project of the Year 2011 winning team

Introducing QUESTudo: A Proud Member of the QUEST Community

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Article by Ehson Kashfipour (Q19)

Everything we do in QUEST is team-based, from classwork to projects to designing our first inter-cohort T-shirt. The idea for a t-shirt that could be worn by all QUEST students (as opposed to the various colors of cohort shirts) was initially proposed by the QUEST Student Organization (QSO) earlier this year. Once the Quality Guild announced the need for great design ideas from QUEST members, students put their creativity to work.

Over several weeks, a number of great designs were submitted and fellow classmates offered their input on each design to make them even better. On October 10, 2011 during the QUEST Ambassador’s meeting, the renowned Reeta Francis (Q17) suggested the idea of putting our school mascot, Testudo, on a purple shirt, dubbing the name “QUESTudo”. It was from here that the design for our new shirt originated.

An original mock-up was drafted later that week, but it took more contributions from fellow QUEST students and staff to create a fun yet professional design. Of course, the idea of a polka dotted bow-tie on QUESTudo was in the mix, but eventually discarded. On October 26, the newest T-shirt design was put to the test of how many “likes” it would earn on the QUEST Facebook page. After being embraced by the entire QUEST community, the design was submitted and approved by the Quality Guild.

As a member of the youngest cohort, I, as with my fellow classmates, am honored and grateful to be a part of the QUEST community and have the desire to give back. We see contributions being made by different students, each utilizing their own expertise and prowess to enhance the QUEST experience. Having had six months of training using Adobe Photoshop as a marketing intern under my belt, I felt it was my turn to show my gratefulness and love for QUEST.

QUEST is a community and everything we do is community-based. The design and production of our new inter-cohort T-shirt resembled that both in the process as well as in the design itself. The QUESTudo design is symbolic of the individuals who make the QUEST community what it is everyday- professional, but most importantly, lots of fun. Be on the lookout for QUESTudo on campus in the very near future!

Spring Break Trip to Panama with Global Brigades

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Article by Alex Bansleben (Q18)

I know what you’re thinking. Even though we still have finals to study for and papers to write, it’s about the time of the year when you’re beginning to wonder, how can I have the best spring break possible? You have one week off of school, and you want to go somewhere warm and have the time of your life. Well, stop your worrying! I’m going to tell you how you can have the best spring break trip (and one that your parents will actually approve of)!

As many of you may know, I am currently working on planning a spring break service trip to Panama with fellow QUEST students. The trip is organized through an international service organization called Global Brigades (www.globalbrigades.org). Every year, GB sends more than 6,000 students abroad on week-long service trips related to one of nine different topics, like public health, the environment, medicine, and others. The program most related to the QUEST program is “business”, which makes this trip officially called a “Global Business Brigade”, but students of all majors are welcome to attend. Here at UMD there is already a Global Medical Brigade club, and they have done three trips to Honduras since their inception.

Because the trip is not officially hosted by the University of Maryland or by the QUEST program, we will have the liberty of designing our own itinerary for this trip. Ideally, here is what it could look like: You will get to spend your week of spring break in rural Panama. Along with other QUEST students, your time will be spent helping to empower community members in the town of Torti Abajo. Every day, you will work in groups of 4-5 people to meet with families/individuals and conduct workshops to help them sell their products and improve their financial stability. Doesn’t that sound similar to the systems thinking approach to process improvement we learn in the core QUEST classes? As a participant on this trip, you will be working with a client (490), listening to the voice of the customer (190), and developing a systems-based solution (390) to help people truly in need. Every day includes a lot of down time, and the town is only one hour east of the exciting Panama City.

Unfortunately, I do not have enough space in this article to discuss every detail of the trip. For now, I can tell that you are wondering how much this trip will cost. The cost of the actual Business Brigade is $880, and flights to Panama in March are generally in the range of $600-700, which adds up to an expected total cost of $1500. However, the fundraising we will be doing as a group could lower that cost substantially. As a trip leader with Alternative Breaks, I can tell you that this cost is lower than any of our week-long international trips.

I hope that you will consider this opportunity to spend your next spring break in Panama with fellow QUESTees! Before the end of the semester, there will be at least one more information session, so be on the lookout for an email or Facebook notification. Also feel free to email me at alex.bansleben@gmail.com for any more information. See you in Panama!

A Night to Remember

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Article by Kate Hartinger (Q17)

It was a beautiful, crisp, fall evening on November 3rd when the students from across the QUEST community came together for one night. It was a night of fun, dancing, some tasty treats and, of course, the Cupid Shuffle…it was the QUEST Formal! It all started last fall at an Ambassadors meeting: A few Cohort 17ers thought it would be awesome to have a QUEST dance. After talking to the Quality Guild, we were able to make the idea a reality. We wanted an opportunity to get the entire community together in a fun, social setting. I was so happy to find how much positive support we received from the beginning.  Sara Bleistein, from Cohort 19, volunteered to help me in planning the event even though she had been in QUEST for less than a semester. This kind of enthusiasm is what truly makes QUEST so special to me.

The event itself was incredible. The Colony Ballroom in the Stamp Student Union was transformed into a fall wonderland with various leaves and gourds for decoration. There was a wide arrangement of hors d’oeuvres from fruits and veggies to egg rolls and wings (and don’t forget the cupcakes!). We had a great turnout of over 125 people and everyone looked dapper in their QUEST Formal finest.  But dresses and snacks aside, the best part was definitely the dancing. After Kylie, one of our QUEST Graduate Assistants, requested “Cupid Shuffle,” it seemed as though no one actually sat down. I even saw Dr. Bailey learning it. After the kickoff, there were some intense dance circles that broke out. I saw the Robot, the Dougie and even some break dancing. Although I will not name names, some dancers do need to work on their “Dougie form”, and you know who you are (Marc and Steve!). We even got to enjoy some old school N*sync, which always equals a good night in my book .  Everyone at the event seemed to have a blast and got to meet more people across different cohorts. We actually had to turn the lights back on at 10 p.m. and kicked some of the last people off the dance floor (…Manas).

As a senior, I really enjoyed having time to let loose before Senior Conference crunch time and bond with the rest of the community. Having great turnout across the three cohorts as well as in the Quality Guild made the night a huge success. I wanted to thank everyone that helped make QUEST Formal happen, especially Sara Bleistein, Melanie Ashton, all ticket sellers and the set-up/clean-up crews. You all helped to make the event a truly memorable night and hopefully, the first of many to come.