Fall 2014 Student Projects

Nowhere is the motto of the Marian University Byrum School of Business "Where Business Happens" more evident than the end-of-semester student presentations, business plan competitions, and internships. This week we had two classes that I'm directly involved with present their work. The first photo shows the BUS 209 Quantitative Analysis of Business class making their final presentation. Each semester students in BUS 209 work with a real company or organization, study its operations, collect and analyze data, and make recommendations. Much like a consultant would for a client. The class is 9 credit hours and incorporates Management, Marketing, and Business Statistics. Integrating content from each of these disciplines, the class is team taught by three instructors. I am primarily responsible for the Statistics module which would be equivalent to a three hour class. We use Excel and SPSS for most of the data analysis. This semester, our client was the Crossroads of America Council of the Boy Scouts of America located in central Indiana.

In the second photo, students from the BUS 325 Business Creation and Development class present their final work. Enrollment in BUS 325 is selective, students must apply and be accepted. This semester the client was the Indianapolis Department of Public Safety--which includes agencies such as the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Fire Department, and Homeland Security. My contribution was to help them develop a “dashboard” application in Excel that would track budget information, personnel data, and performance goals for each agency. This application was connected to a “back-end” database created using Microsoft Access. Students from my MIS 310 Database Management class developed the underlying data model and assisted with data entry.

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