Each year, students in the Anderson University College of Business gain valuable experience while helping a community charity help others.
Anderson Interfaith Ministries (AIM) exists to help citizens of Anderson in need. Since they were founded by faith leaders in the community in 1989, AIM has grown to 500 volunteers and 26 employees. Each day they work to help individuals and families with a variety of needs and thus providing hope and changing lives.
Usually a challenge among nonprofit organizations is to do more with less; this is where Anderson’s business students apply what they learn in class as they help AIM identify areas to streamline.
“I think it’s so important for students to work on real projects,” said Dr. Kim Whitehead, associate professor of quantitative management. “I work with a lot of companies and organizations like AIM to find opportunities for the students to go out into the community and not only have a project to work on for class but to learn how to contribute to an organization or how to contribute to the community.”
Using Lean Six Sigma concepts, students helped AIM to identify areas of efficiency that would benefit them the most. With the assistance of Sargent Metal, they were able to provide two Surface Pro Tablets to AIM over the Christmas holidays.
Recent graduate Isaac Schrader, one of the student team leaders, was working with AIM’s housing sector, examining their process of handling incoming requests for home repairs.
“I learned about being in charge of people in a group, coordinating things, setting up meetings, working with a deadline,” Schrader said. “The people who needed repairs on their house would call this one guy who is in charge of the housing program. He would have to do everything manually. He would ask them all of these questions.”
As his team project began this past fall, little did Schraeder know how valuable his experience would become. Whitehead praised him for his agility.
“He was on a team,” Whitehead recalled. “Over the course of the semester the team disappeared. Things happen in life, people change classes or leave classes for a lot of different reasons, so Isaac ended up doing this on his own. I approached him and said ‘I can get you another teammate. We can do whatever we need to do.’ He said, ‘no, I’ve got this.’ Not only did he have it, he exceeded all expectations.”
Schraeder recalled, “Obviously I had to learn to adapt to some unforeseen situations and take on a little more work than I was expecting to take on. I learned how to work well with people outside of my organization and ask the right questions about the project I was working on.”
“It’s our opportunity at Anderson University to give back a little to our local industry and our local organizations like AIM,” Whitehead said. “At the same time, these executives, people that work in these organizations are really pouring into our students their own expertise and knowledge. What they get back is a great contribution from our students like the project Isaac worked on.”
Kristi King-Brock, executive director of AIM, praised Anderson University, the College of Business and Dr. Whitehead for their long standing partnership and common bond. She also praised College of Business Dean Dr. Steve Nail, dean, for his involvement in AIM’s board and as an overall ambassador for what they do.
“Our missions are so aligned with our faith based core value and the university’s faith-based value,” said King-Brock. “We have the same drive and mission of being able to spread Christ’s love to those who are hurting in our community. Kim is totally sold on the work that we do here. She has been a big advocate of supporting us and having her students engaged with us.”
“AU is a Christian organization. This is one of the things that we really try to focus on throughout all of our programs,” Dr. Whitehead said. “We talk about hospitality, expanding that out into our communities and what we can do to help in our community. So everybody in the class learns about AIM, everybody learns about each other’s projects.”