This spring, the University of South Florida’s Student Consulting course paired teams of undergraduate students with international, global alumni-owned businesses—a first for the course, which launched in the fall of 2019.
Designed to give students the opportunity to collaborate with industry professionals and tackle contemporary business challenges, the course delivers a high-impact learning experience to students of all academic backgrounds. Over the course of each sixteen-week semester, students deepen their business acumen and develop valuable consulting skills as well as the ability to collaborate with diverse groups of people. Prior to Spring 2022, students were matched with local businesses such as Bank of America, Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County, Cumberland Advisors and FCCI Insurance Group.
“The course aligns really well with the values and experiences that we aim to offer Honors College students, namely experiential learning and the opportunity to move outside of the classroom and really learn by doing,” said Cayla Lanier, campus director for the Judy Genshaft Honors College on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. “Today, hiring committees are looking for critical thinkers—people who can apply their knowledge and skills to a variety of changing environments and contexts. The Student Consulting course provides students with an opportunity to do that and more. Students gain valuable insights into the working world, how decisions are made within companies and what they have to contribute. It’s excellent training for aspiring professionals of all kinds.”
“This is all part of a concerted effort to reconnect with our incredibly successful global alumni and create mutually beneficial international partnerships,” said Martinez. “We are especially interested in implementing new and innovative strategies to provide current students with unique opportunities, such as the one offered by the Student Consulting course.”
The course is the brainchild of Greg Smogard, assistant vice president of innovation and business development at the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus, who worked with Lanier and Vanessa Martinez, assistant director of community relations for USF World, to transform the spring semester into an opportunity for international partnership.
Martinez forged connections with USF alums François Rioux, president of Quebec-based Groupe Bertrand-Rioux, and François Soulard, founder and CEO of PlaceLoop, a digital marketing firm with offices in Paris and Bordeaux. “Both men had a lot of wonderful stories about their time at USF,” she said. “They were enthusiastic about the opportunity to reconnect with the university and work with our students."
The students who enrolled in the course in the spring were split into two teams, the first of which was paired with PlaceLoop. “I could tell the course was going to offer a huge, real-world challenge and that it would be like no other class I had ever taken,” said Sara Osborne, a business management major who graduated this spring from the USF Muma College of Business. Osborne worked with a first-year accounting major and a fourth-year biomedical sciences major to conduct competitive, market, and gap analyses and offer a plan of action to the PlaceLoop management team. “This course gave me the confidence to step into a leadership role and to accept that I’m not always going to have an immediate answer,” Osborne said. “It taught me how to get out of my comfort zone and trust the process. With perseverance and a supportive team, everything came together. I was so proud of us for reaching the finish line and offering recommendations that the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company plans to implement. That alone was incredibly rewarding.”
The second group—paired with Riôtel of Groupe Bertrand-Rioux—consisted of third-year economics major Naren Bollineni, first-year finance major Kinsey Roth, and third-year cybersecurity major Tristan Kistler. “We wanted the students to help us develop a new product for the hospitality industry, so we tasked them with market research that would help us decide whether the business venture was worth pursuing,” said Charles-Alexandre Rioux of Groupe Bertrand-Rioux.
“It was cool to see our different disciplines come together,” said Bollineni. “As a finance major, Kinsey was able to look into how competition affects economic output. Together, we analyzed Airbnb and Sonder as well as the top three Canadian competitors. As a cybersecurity major, Tristan is really good with computers, so he did a lot of information input. We each utilized our skillsets—especially the hard-skills. And we learned to develop our soft-skills as we worked together as a team.”
Throughout the semester, each group met with Smogard to complete weekly whiteboarding sessions and discuss the assigned reading: Linda K. Stroh’s The Basic Principles of Effective Consulting. “I really benefitted from the professional development,” said Bollineni. “On top of reading The Basic Principles of Effective Consulting, we also reviewed it. When we’d meet with Dr. Smogard, he’d be like, ‘What did you learn?’ We’d tell him. We’d discuss the reading. And then we’d turn around and immediately apply what we’d learned. He taught us how to talk like consultants, how to organize ourselves, how to interview. Everything.”
By the end of the semester, the management teams at PlaceLoop and Groupe Bertrand-Rioux were thoroughly impressed by the students’ ability to learn a new industry and transfer those learnings into insightful business recommendations in such a short period of time. “Tristan, Naren, and Kinsey did a great job learning about the hospitality industry and the competitive landscape, and provided us with recommendations and potential next steps,” said Charles-Alexandre Rioux. “With today’s labor shortages and ‘The Great Resignation,’ we are continuously looking for creative ways to find the necessary resources to work on early stage and R&D projects. These projects are what allow our company to stay ahead of the curve and innovate. This project made us realized that young, college-educated students could play an important role in those types of projects. It opened our eyes to new opportunities and will definitely be something we continue to implement internally.”“This was probably one of the best courses I’ve ever taken,” said Bollineni. “It proved to me that I really like consulting and that it’s not an impossible goal. It’s no longer a mystery I have to solve or a path I have to uncover on my own. It’s been done by people before. Dr. Smogard is a consultant, himself. And I now have a connection in Canada.”
The Student Consulting course will return in the fall to match students with international, global alumni-owned businesses. “I want to take it again,” said Bollineni. “Seriously. I enjoyed the class that much.”
Both Smogard and Lanier are hopeful the course will continue to evolve. “I think there are many students who would love to study abroad and even more who maybe want to dip their toe in international waters rather than going for a full swim,” said Lanier. “A three-day or four-day experience would be just enough for them. I would love to be able to provide that along with the extended cross-cultural interactions on research and teamwork and problem-solving in addition to the company pitches to the executive management team.”
Registration for the fall semester is now open. To learn more about the Student Consulting course (MAR4933), contact Greg Smogard at gsmogard@usf.edu.