BEST Practices

Out of all the impressive students in the Hankamer School of Business, a select group is chosen each year to participate in the BEST program. A two-semester, accelerated strategic management course, the program provides an experience something like an honors capstone course, taking the students out into the real business world and also around the country and world on business ventures.

The class is formulated to expose students to global and local businesses and to provide students with hands-on experience. The acronym BEST stands for the four foundational elements of the year-long course: Business, Excellence, Scholarship, and Team.

In the spring of their junior year, students are nominated for the course by a professor. Interviews are conducted by the previous year's BEST students, and a selection of twenty-eight bright, team-minded students is made. Once the course is underway, the students are divided up into five committees of leadership where they elect two student CEOs—a structure designed to mimic the business world.

Dr. Marlene Reed, visiting professor of management, is the director for the BEST course. "The goal of the course is for students to know who they are and what they can contribute—and to understand the responsibility of privilege," Reed says, noting that she welcomes all ideas and innovative ways of accomplishing tasks. This semester's student CEOs, seniors Emily Stroderd and Patrick Roberts (pictured), agree. "If we're concerned about something in the course, we e-mail Dr. Reed. We have a voice in how the class is run," Stroderd says.

Throughout the school year, Reed presents a series of case studies from businesses like G.E. and Morgan Stanley for the class to analyze. "We get to put meaning to the terms we've heard throughout college in analyzing these case studies. We get to see what it means to be ethical in business," Stroderd says. "In a lot of cases, it's hard to tell immediately what is right and wrong. So it shows you how to translate what it is to be ethical in actual situations."

But the defining characteristic of the BEST program is the class's interaction with the outside business world. Throughout the year, students are in contact with business clients who need help developing business plans. Groups of students devote hours to the work, and already four of the case studies the students wrote were submitted to professional journals. Later in the year, these students will stand before a panel of university professors and defend their ideas. For BEST students, the pressure and the reality of the business world becomes real.

The BEST students also take two trips to supplement their in-class work. In the fall of 2008 Reed and her students traveled to the Dominican Republic, where they were connected with three separate clients: an entrepreneur who needed help developing a business plan for his mobile mill; a resort area named Cabareti, where students worked on business plans to establish sustainable tourism; and the women and children of Mata de Palma, a poverty-stricken area. Reed beams while she talks about the work accomplished by her students. "They know I've not asked them to do anything easy, but everyone has stepped outside their comfort zone to help out." The Organization of American States granted the BEST program $50,000 to continue their work in the Dominican Republic. This spring the students will take their second trip, to Washington D.C.

The BEST program is also distinguished by the fast pace of the class. "Group work that would take six months in another class takes us one month," Roberts says. "I am trying to keep up with my classmates, who are churning out such great work." According to Stroderd, "BEST is a team environment unlike any other in the business school. What makes it different is that students have to apply to get into it, so it's a team where everybody wants to work hard."

As he nears the end of his BEST course, Roberts reflects, "With this program, it's not just work to make a good grade; if you do a lot of research and put a lot of time into the work, you can really help somebody."