When I came to UC, one of the types of classes that I didn't expect to take was a business class. The "Social Entrepreneurship" honors seminar was one of the best ones that I could have taken, as it taught basic business-building principles in an international environment, working with students from UQAM in Montreal.
At the beginning of the class, we stressed the importance of ideation in business creation, brainstorming several different ideas and presenting our best ones to the class. I was surprised to find out I was the only engineer, as most of the students in the class were in business, but I was up for the challenge of bridging perspectives over the course of the semester. In September, we went to Montreal to meet our fellow UQAM students, doing various icebreakers and forming our teams once we identified our common interests. We got a little bit of time to explore Montreal, but most of our time there was group work. We also met each other's professors, with 2 at each university.
I did get to partially explore Montreal though, seeing the bay area, the museum district, and visiting many fabulous restaurants! I also really enjoyed the bilingual nature, with people switching back and forth between French and English, allowing me a chance to practice a little bit of French as well!
After getting back from this trip, the real work began. My team started out working on an idea for a plastic composite roof to replace the corrugated metal sheet roofs found in the poorest areas of the world. After brainstorming and doing research for a few weeks, we realized that there may be many design flaws in this idea. After speaking to a professor, we realized that a better option may be working from the ground up, literally! There was an option for us to construct a house from the ground up, which would resolve size issues in terms of the roof fitting onto houses.
After this, our plans and roles on the team shifted. There were 5 of us, with a team leader who was also on finance (Erin), two people on marketing (Danielle and Helene, who was from Strasbourg, but studied at UQAM), a HR person (Frank, from Haiti, studying at UQAM), and I was in charge of design as the sole engineer in the class. We determined our composite would be a mixture of glass dust and concrete, for improved compressive strength, and got to work in our respective departments.
In November, the UQAM students came to Cincinnati, and after a few more days of teamwork, we gave our final presentations!
The lessons I was able to take away from this class were firstly how many major departments go into a business. I had no idea how strenuous even just starting a business could be in terms of different department collaboration. Explaining the marketing side to the finance side, and the finance side to the engineering side can result in lost messages. Furthermore, having 4 professors created a communication problem at certain points in our project, and we received some conflicting advice. Working across country barriers (and at times cultural) also sometimes created problems with accountability between team members. The lessons that we learned on how to mitigate it will surely be useful in the future.
We were also able to have a lot of fun with them while they were in Cincinnati. I wasn't able to spend the whole time with them, as I went to a taekwondo tournament on that Saturday morning and afternoon, but I made sure to go out to eat with them, especially at Montgomery Inn and Mr. Sushi. On Saturday night, I was able to join them for a house party as well before they went home, showing them an interesting side of American culture! It was hard to say goodbye, but I hope that I will be able to stay in touch with them in the future!
All in all, this was an extremely time-consuming class, but I learned a lot of important lessons on business building, as well as interdepartmental and supervisor collaboration with engineers. I also was very glad to have the international component in this class, and enjoyed seeing bilingual Montreal!
At the beginning of the class, we stressed the importance of ideation in business creation, brainstorming several different ideas and presenting our best ones to the class. I was surprised to find out I was the only engineer, as most of the students in the class were in business, but I was up for the challenge of bridging perspectives over the course of the semester. In September, we went to Montreal to meet our fellow UQAM students, doing various icebreakers and forming our teams once we identified our common interests. We got a little bit of time to explore Montreal, but most of our time there was group work. We also met each other's professors, with 2 at each university.
I did get to partially explore Montreal though, seeing the bay area, the museum district, and visiting many fabulous restaurants! I also really enjoyed the bilingual nature, with people switching back and forth between French and English, allowing me a chance to practice a little bit of French as well!
After getting back from this trip, the real work began. My team started out working on an idea for a plastic composite roof to replace the corrugated metal sheet roofs found in the poorest areas of the world. After brainstorming and doing research for a few weeks, we realized that there may be many design flaws in this idea. After speaking to a professor, we realized that a better option may be working from the ground up, literally! There was an option for us to construct a house from the ground up, which would resolve size issues in terms of the roof fitting onto houses.
After this, our plans and roles on the team shifted. There were 5 of us, with a team leader who was also on finance (Erin), two people on marketing (Danielle and Helene, who was from Strasbourg, but studied at UQAM), a HR person (Frank, from Haiti, studying at UQAM), and I was in charge of design as the sole engineer in the class. We determined our composite would be a mixture of glass dust and concrete, for improved compressive strength, and got to work in our respective departments.
In November, the UQAM students came to Cincinnati, and after a few more days of teamwork, we gave our final presentations!
The lessons I was able to take away from this class were firstly how many major departments go into a business. I had no idea how strenuous even just starting a business could be in terms of different department collaboration. Explaining the marketing side to the finance side, and the finance side to the engineering side can result in lost messages. Furthermore, having 4 professors created a communication problem at certain points in our project, and we received some conflicting advice. Working across country barriers (and at times cultural) also sometimes created problems with accountability between team members. The lessons that we learned on how to mitigate it will surely be useful in the future.
We were also able to have a lot of fun with them while they were in Cincinnati. I wasn't able to spend the whole time with them, as I went to a taekwondo tournament on that Saturday morning and afternoon, but I made sure to go out to eat with them, especially at Montgomery Inn and Mr. Sushi. On Saturday night, I was able to join them for a house party as well before they went home, showing them an interesting side of American culture! It was hard to say goodbye, but I hope that I will be able to stay in touch with them in the future!
All in all, this was an extremely time-consuming class, but I learned a lot of important lessons on business building, as well as interdepartmental and supervisor collaboration with engineers. I also was very glad to have the international component in this class, and enjoyed seeing bilingual Montreal!
Above: partial images of the brick and roof structure utilized in the house design