For the third year in a row, students from the Anderson School of Management returned from the Small Business Institute’s Project of the Year Competition in New Orleans with accolades in hand.
This time around, the students enjoyed two third-place finishes: one in the Graduate/Specialized category, the other in the Graduate/Comprehensive category.
Stacy Sacco, director of the Small Business Institute (SBI) at UNM, said he is always happy to see students succeed.
The Anderson students, and their accomplishments at these national competitions, don’t get the community recognition they deserve, he said. There is a general sense that such successes are overshadowed by pessimistic statistics that suggest the state is coping with a struggling economy, he said.
“It’s odd, in its own way,” Sacco said, “You have a lot of people who say things about New Mexico, like ‘we’re the 50th best (in this),’ or ‘we have a low ranking (in that).’ Well (as it turns out), UNM generally, and in particular Anderson School of Management, has always done very well in national competitions, so in many ways, we should be very proud of our students.”
More than 75 schools from around the country were represented at this year's competition, he said. Both the competition and the SBI itself are aimed at providing business students with real world, case-study like experience in working with small, local business ventures.
“With the SBI, you’re up against (schools nationwide) with students doing the same exact thing; they’re doing business plans and strategy, research for small businesses in their community and for our students, they then serve as business consultants for our community,” Sacco said, “but on the back end of that, here we are, we’re going out winning awards and providing great resources and information and advice to local businesses."
Through the SBI, Anderson students are directly contributing to job creation in New Mexico, he said.
“We’re creating economic development,” Sacco said, "it's pretty awesome."
Although the team has enjoyed a steady stream of success in recent years, there is no room for complacency in the world of marketing, he said. He said a competitive and driven attitude lent itself to the Anderson students' success.
Dr. Kapelianis, faculty advisor to the Graduate/Specialized team comprised of MBA students at Anderson, is helping to create a legacy at the Anderson SBI, Sacco said. Kapelianis has led teams to success in this category at each of the past three year’s competitions.
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“It’s actually pretty easy to tell, within the first couple of weeks, if a project is going to work out well or not. Part of it has to do with the client; is the client (open) and accessible to students,” Kapelianis said.
Kapelianis said the recipe for success at these competitions consists of three simple ingredients: a strong team, a willing client and a workable project. The intricacies of effective team-building and project development provide Anderson students with the ultimate learning experience, he said.
“Part of it has to do with the team energy, the team synergy that they have; (they have) different skill sets and these skill sets complement each other well,” he said. “Part of it has to do with the problem; some problems just end up being not very interesting or not difficult nor challenging, or on the other hand, too challenging, kind of impossible to solve in a semester."
As an advising mentor to the student team, Kapelianis said there are times at which the SBI learning experience calls for a ‘hands-on, hands-off’ approach. His most active role in the process is that of “scoping” project applications for viability as well as screening potential clients prior to pairing them with student teams, as to ensure student safety, after that, he said he often finds himself having to “step back and let students wander into blind alleys and kind of lose their way, because that’s a key part of the learning experience.”
Student team-leader Alex Mansfield, who recently graduated from the MBA Marketing program at Anderson, said he agrees with his mentor in that the SBI is providing business students with the ultimate learning experience.
As someone who describes himself as “more qualitative than quantitative,” Mansfield said being able to enjoy his team’s success has been the pinnacle of his academic career.
“It’s just a fascinating process, and that being said, because it’s not ‘cut-and-dry’ or ‘black-and-white,’ there was no guarantee that we would land on exactly the right answer, there was a chance we’d land on exactly the wrong one; it was nothing but shades of gray, but I feel like (we) certainly did our due diligence as far as gathering information (goes) and asking subjective questions in a completely objective manner," Mansfield said. ”I can’t imagine going through the graduate experience without something like this.”
Johnny Vizcaino is a staff reporter at the Daily Lobo. Contact him at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @thedailyjohnnyv.
