Nope—not presents or Christmas trees—but final presentations for the projects our Management students have been working on all semester. Gusties in Organizational Behavior clearly took their community partnerships seriously when they presented to their clients on Thursday, the City of St. Peter’s Administrator Todd Prafke and Finance Director Paula O’Connell. Students’ projects included revamping the City’s wellness program and providing educational materials for increasing St. Peter residential recycling. These projects provide a chance for real impact on issues our client identified as needs—true reciprocity.
The recycling team, Maddison Ackiss and Syed Shah, took up the challenge of figuring out ways to change residents’ habits of what they throw away and what they recycle. Using an educational approach with eye-catching graphics and opportunities for recycling that many residents may not know, Maddison and Shah provided re-usable educational tools targeted toward all City residents from K-12 kids to adults.
The wellness team, Mohaned Alhouni, Lydia Kennedy, and Missy Gardner, took up the challenge of increasing wellness program usage for all City employees, working with a real budget dollars and the City’s director of wellness, Cindy Moulton. They researched current wellness program usage by analyzing data from a survey, benchmarked other cities’ programs, and provided a whole range of programs ready for implementation within budget. They will even be the go-to implementation partners next fall, outside of class.
Whenever projects go as well as these do, I am grateful for the strong relationships Gustavus has with the community and our ability to respond to real needs in the St. Peter community. College towns can have a “town and gown” divide – I’ve experienced that firsthand, and it’s not pretty. It’s a thrill to be part of a Carnegie Community Engaged Campus and know that community-based learning is part of the fabric of Gustavus.
