News

DePaul students put their skills to work for New Orleans businesses

December 10, 2007

Business students from DePaul University could have spent their post-Thanksgiving break relaxing at the beach or catching up on sleep. Instead, they spent it helping small and not-for-profit businesses in New Orleans compete in the post-Katrina environment.

A group of 16 MBA students from DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business—half the school’s full-time class—traveled to New Orleans in early December as part of a service project to help boost the city’s economy.

DePaul MBA student Leanne Mai-ly Hilgart, who spearheaded the trip, had participated in a rewarding community service trip as an undergraduate, so she sent an e-mail to her classmates to gauge their interest in a graduate-level trip. When more than half the class responded enthusiastically, the students took the proposal to Ray Whittington, DePaul’s business dean, who provided funding to make the trip possible.

“I had read about how so many businesses hadn’t rebuilt and how that’s such a big part of the economy,” Hilgart says. “Originally we were thinking of having some students work on homebuilding and some on business, but everybody has such great and different work experiences, we really wanted to see what we could do with all our different skill sets.”

After receiving funding, the students contacted the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Freeman School for help in identifying local businesses in need of assistance. Two teams of four students each ended up working with the Idea Village, which provides consulting and other services to small businesses, while two teams worked directly with the Levy-Rosenblum Institute to provide services for two of its community service program clients, Storyville Spirits Co., a new restaurant on Magazine Street, and InExchange, a fair-trade boutique specializing in arts and crafts produced by underserved populations.

Despite having just a week to work with their clients, each of the groups provided the businesses with an impressive list of deliverables. The team working with Storyville Spirits Co. created a press release, redesigned the restaurant’s menu and even designed a new logo for the business. The team working with InExchange created a new website for the boutique and added e-commerce capability.

While the students recognize that their work was just one small contribution toward rebuilding the city's economy, they hope to make the service trip a yearly event at DePaul.

“I hope people in New Orleans understand that the rest of the country hasn’t forgotten about them,” says Garrett Glawe, who worked on Storyville Spirits Co. team. “We know there are still problems down here but hopefully other people will follow our lead.”