In one business class, students are taking their lessons to the street.
Students of Ricardo Boeing’s marketing class at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point are raising money for various local nonprofits using marketing plans they developed earlier in the semester.
The Business 330 class teaches students how they can use their skills in a real environment, said Boeing, assistant professor of business.
“Instead of just having them write a marketing plan, I had them write a marketing plan for one of the charities that we have in town,” Boeing said. “So we have 14 groups working with 14 charities around Stevens Point and even Wausau.”
Boeing said students proposed their own projects, collected their own data and performed their own analyses based on the theories and concepts studied over the semester. Students used this to develop their marketing plans, which they then had two months to implement. During this period, students recorded their progress to put together a video as their final exam on the Dec. 18.
One of these students is Jonaton Garcia, international business major. Garcia’s group is working with the DC Everest-Wausau chapter of Blessings in a Backpack, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to providing food for children in need.
According to its website, the local chapter focuses on providing “food over the weekend for school children in the DC Everest and Wausau districts who may otherwise not have enough food at home.”
The experience was completely new to Garcia.
“I had never actually done something like this,” he said. “It makes class more entertaining.”
The plan Garcia’s group came up with involved standing outside the local Trig’s grocery store, where they hoped to collect food from potential donors shopping there. To Garcia’s surprise, the plan was a massive success.
“We were standing outside just hoping that people would donate a couple stuff, and we actually ended up filling two shopping carts full of food products,” he said.
Garcia said the group estimated the collective value of the donations to be around $800 of food.
Students will also be able to include their plan in their portfolio.
Students will receive full credit for the work they do, which will give them a massive edge when seeking employment opportunities, Boeing said. Garcia said he plans to use the experience to strengthen his resume.
Matthew Wiltzius
Reporter
Matthew.R.Wiltzius@uwsp.edu