Senior-Led Seminars

For Students, By Students

Made possible by a generous gift of the Donald W. White, Sr. ’50 Family, Babson now offers five classes each Spring Semester taught entirely by seniors. The classes are on topics that hold special meaning with their instructors, and range from the food truck industry to web application development. By sharing their passion with their peers, the seniors are able to teach topics that aren’t currently offered in the standard undergraduate curriculum. These classes are very popular among fellow students whose desire for knowledge extends beyond the typical course load.

The 2012 Senior-Led Seminars are listed below.

The Food Truck Industry

Spencer Hughes

Recent economic issues have changed the way Americans spend their disposable income, and one impacted area is the restaurant industry. Restaurateurs and chefs have to get creative and find new ways to spur business and stay profitable. The answer to some of their problems is food trucks. This seminar looks at how the food truck industry was started, how it is run, and the future of food trucks. Deeper discussions will be around regulation, both government and health; marketing, through use of social media; types of food trucks, from nationality to dietary needs; consideration of comparable industry in other countries; and overall business strategy. The seminar will culminate with either an offsite visit into Boston to experience a food truck or bringing a food truck to campus.

Apathy to Action: Passion and Movement

Kaitlyn Carmel

This course is discussion-based, designed to encourage thought-provoking conversation on student social and political apathy using multiple lenses. The course will serve as an introduction to conversation and will work towards identifying whether our definition of action has evolved due to changes in society and culture (in empathy, in technology, etc.), or whether we have become desensitized by our environment, reducing effective action. During the five weeks, students will be given academic lenses that have positive and negative interpretations of modern apathy and inaction and will also use current and past historic examples of movement that have shaped national and international development. Students will be encouraged to bring in personal experiences and thoughts to share in discussion as it relates to the frameworks and definitions of apathy and action we will identify in the course with hopes of widening our perspectives. The course is anticipated to culminate in the execution of an action-based and passion motivated awareness campaign/s of the students’ choosing, dependent upon the passion we’re able to stir within ourselves as we dig deep into the social and environmental factors that shape our engagement with that around us.

App Development for Entrepreneurs

John Gesimondo

In this seminar, students will learn a foundation of web application development using the most popular app development framework in today’s tech startups: Ruby on Rails. This agile framework allows developers to rapidly create powerful applications, taking focus away from the code and replacing it with the needs of the customer and business. Notable RoR products include Twitter, Basecamp, Groupon, Hulu, and Justin.TV. During the seminar, we will start with a one-class introduction to Ruby and Rails, and then use the remaining seminar meetings to create our first web app - a shopping cart application. By the end of the seminar, the shopping website will be fully operational from listing to checkout, including some internationalization, error handling, and AJAX along the way. By the end of the seminar, students will be able to make a web application on their own.

Basic Theater Concepts’ Application to Business

Amanda Greenslet

This seminar will focus on basic theater concepts, such as blocking, line inflection, and physicality onstage, and how these concepts can be applied to business settings, specifically presentations. The seminar is intended to be a theater class that teaches the students how to engage an audience regardless of what text or presentation is being staged. The seminar will not focus on writing or structure of the speech, but will instead give students the tools to effectively engage any audience regardless of the subject material. The seminar will focus on the theatrical learning goal first, and on the integration of business and theater concepts after the theater goals have been mastered. The goal is to give students the tools they need to become better presenters: to know how to fluidly move around the presentation area especially in group settings; to interpret text and breathe life into seemingly dull works; and to effectively present oneself physically onstage, as a confident and eloquent speaker. These will be achieved through group discussions based on previous experience in other classes, as well as the theatrical skills gained in the course; through exercises, both individual and in groups; and through interpretation of things like blank dialogue, poetry, and general business information.

Exploring CSR in a For-Profit World

Francesca Sagripanti

Today, more than ever, consumers hold the power of choice regarding their purchasing power. Consumers are considering companies not only based on their products, but also on the impact they have in their environment and their communities. To meet this expectation, corporations are enhancing their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) presence, aligning their values with a greater good and taking action to have a positive effect. This seminar seeks to begin to understand the differing CSR programs of various businesses and how that has impacted their approach and impact. Within this case study styled course, students will: learn about different CSR models, including learning of specific corporate projects from guest speakers; understand how CSR programs affect a company’s bottom line and brand image; be challenged to apply these key lessons to the Babson curriculum; and develop two key frameworks: one for analyzing a CSR program and another for understanding how to successfully build a CSR program.