ESCONDIDO: Cal State San Marcos program marks its 15th anniversary

Senior Experience requires business students to solve real problems

By ANDREA MOSS - Staff Writer | Friday, May 16, 2008 8:16 PM PDT ∞

ESCONDIDO ---- Biggs Harley-Davidson general manager Kirby Keim knew the dealership was pumping lots of money into special events, but he didn't know whether the practice was doing the business any good.

"It costs us a lot of money to put special events on, by the time you hire a band and provide food and all of the things we do at an event," Keim said Friday. "So we, of course, wanted to maximize our investment."

He turned to Cal State San Marcos' Senior Experience program for help. Launched 15 years ago, the program challenges the university's business majors to solve real-world problems that local for-profit and nonprofit organizations are facing.

A team of Cal State San Marcos students recently completed a 10-week marketing analysis for San Marcos-based Biggs, which sells and rents Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The results showed that while the dealership's promotional events were mostly hitting their mark, there were small ways the efforts could be improved.

Keim said the effort was "absolutely" worth the $1,000 fee he paid to the university. Cal State student Charles Seaton, who carried out the Biggs project with several teammates, said they got a significant return of their own.

"Real-world experience ---- that was the real value," Seaton said. "We learned about how much work (a market analysis) is and how to actually do the analysis. And this is definitely something we can list on our resumes."

He and other students who participated in Senior Experience this semester showed off their projects to about 200 business leaders Thursday during a trade show at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. The efforts included customer analyses, demographic studies, the creation of new marketing plans, and the evaluation of expansion potential.

San Diego Gas & Electric, the El Cajon branch of Borrego Solar, Escondido-based Stone Brewing, Vista-based Dimension One Spas and North County Health Services were among the projects' beneficiaries.

Senior Experience Director Jim Hamerly said the program is unique in the United States because it requires students to spend 500 to 1,000 hours focusing on a sponsor company's problem. That includes negotiating a consulting contract with the firm, studying its background, figuring out how to solve its problem, and preparing a report for the company, he said.

Students are graded on the results, their summary presentations and the business value of their findings, Hamerly said. Senior Experience just saw its 1,000th project completed, he said.

"And we had one team that actually set a record this year," Hamerly said. "They generated $4.2 million in new business for their company."

Jorge Corona was part of a four-person Senior Experience team that created a marketing plan for Escondido-based Autopark Collision, whose owner wanted to attract more customers. The team designed a "glove box kit" that includes a $250 discount coupon for Autopark Collision and persuaded Heller Ford in Escondido to put the kits in every car the dealership sells, said Corona.

The business also now displays the auto body shop's posters, he said.

"It was lots and lots of hours of trying to figure out who his (potential) customers were," he said about the body shop's owner. "But the plan we came up with is working really well for him."

Borrego Solar hired another Senior Experience team to create a database that cross-references every affordable-housing development in the country with government-offered incentives for the installation of solar electric systems.

Christine Yoho, who worked on that project, said students were warned by professors that their projects might be stressful: Among the biggest challenges would be learning to deal with vastly different personalities, strengths and weaknesses.

"We were very open and honest with each other," said Yoho, explaining how her team avoided that potential hurdle. "And we said right from the beginning, 'If we're not happy with the way you're doing something, we're going to tell you, and we'll sit down and talk about it.'"

Her teammate, Lana Barnhart, said that besides gaining experience that will be "extremely valuable" when she looks for future jobs, she learned what she is capable of through the program.

Contact Hamerly at (760) 750-4266 or jhamerly@csusm.edu for information about Senior Experience.

Contact staff writer Andrea Moss at (760) 739-6654 or amoss@nctimes.com.

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