Business Students Convert Class Lessons into Community Service

By Tom Gresham

Students in a course taught in the VCU School of Business are learning that business principles can play an important role in enterprises that are not outfitted for profit.

Kim Gower, an adjunct professor and graduate student in the School of Business, this semester taught four sections of Organizational Communication, a management course with an emphasis on service-learning projects. Each class forms an organization devoted to a project that will help those in need in the Richmond area. The organization is wholly run by students, who assume defined roles similar to those in for-profit and non-profit organizations.

This semester’s class projects included a walk to benefit the Greater Virginia Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation; a food drive to benefit FeedMore, the overarching organization behind the Central Virginia Food Bank, Meals on Wheels and the Community Kitchen; a project to provide resources for a mentoring program at G.W. Carver Elementary School; and an effort to donate food to the Central Virginia Food Bank and raise awareness, money and clothing for the Richmond Community Thanksgiving Celebration at the Richmond Convention Center.

Jessica Milburn, a junior accounting major, said the students’ motivation to produce a successful project grows after they meet their clients and learn just how their work can benefit them. Milburn grew so attached to her group’s client – Carver Elementary’s Carver Promise program – that she plans to become a mentor in the program herself.

“When you learn about their needs, what they do and why they do what they do, you become driven to meet and exceed your goals for them,” Milburn said.

The class project provides students a real-world experience infused with the kind of tactical details they will utilize after graduation, such as developing requests for proposal from suppliers, interacting with clients, creating a brand (students name their organizations) and planning and running a major event.

Milburn, who also participated in a service-learning project when she took Organizational Behavior with Gower during a previous semester, said the principles that they learn stick with them through the process in a way that a lecture cannot accomplish.

Gower said the process helps demystify some of the business lessons they learn in the classroom. At the end of the semester, when the students have successfully completed their projects and provided a tangible benefit to their clients, they have concrete evidence of their readiness for the world that waits after graduation.

“I feel the most important thing the students gain from their involvement in these projects is confidence in their individual abilities, and realization of the power of what they can accomplish as part of a team and an entire organization comprised of students,” Gower said.