When we talk about real-world experiences being vital to a complete education at the David Eccles School of Business, this is what we’re talking about.
Four second-year MBA students were tasked by Salvador Petilos, the Director of Alcoholic Beverage Control for the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, with examining whether the state is efficient in the number and location of its retail outlets. In a place where liquor policy is always a hot topic, rife with political maneuvering and intrigue, the DABC wanted someone to provide straightforward data, and they came to the David Eccles School of Business to get it.
The four students—left to right (Sean Sampson, Jonathan Deesing, Neil Lockhart and Sunitha Yadav—explored city populations from across the state, sales numbers from existing stores, even real estate developments schedule for the future, to come up with final recommendations.
The experience proved valuable, according to the students. Yadav said it was interesting to “learn about how government-owned entities function and conduct business, especially in the context of such a controversial subject in the state.” Lockhart concurred, saying “it was interesting to see the interplay of business and politics that the DABC operates with. It was a real-life example of concepts we studied in economics, with the government artificially limiting supply.”
Both Deesing and Sampson acknowledged the value of working on the project for their education, as well as their respective career paths.
“It is vitally important that as MBA students we have to opportunity to work with real-world clients, with real-world results,” Sampson said. “This is extremely powerful as an example of business skills in practice and our ability to work in these environments. That then translates into conversations we can have with potential employers that are looking for that real-life experience outside of the classroom.”
Deesing mentioned various aspects of the students’ classwork that came into play on the DABC project—including managing a project, working with a team, delivering a professional presentation—and said the experience is particularly valuable to him as someone who entered the MBA program with limited experience.
“I will certainly use many of the aspects of the project in my future career,” Deesing added. “Presenting before a group, working with a team, coordinating and communicating with a client, and conducting exhaustive research were all skill sets I was able to expand during the time I worked on this project.”
The students recently delivered their recommendations at the DABC Commission’s monthly meeting, with Deesing leading the room through the students’ PowerPoint presentation outlining their process. Their ultimate finding was that the state could use a dozen more retail outlets, particularly in the west side of the Salt Lake Valley and in northern Utah County—areas that have seen explosive population growth in recent years. It was a presentation the students had practiced often, and the work they put into the study and the presentation inspired Full-time MBA Director Dave Harris to call it “one of the best I’ve seen in 25 years.”
The DABC commissioners on hand for the presentation would likely agree—they roundly acknowledged the valuable information found and delivered by the students. David L. Gladwell, the commission’s chairman, called it an “impressive study,” while Commissioner Kathleen McConkie Collinwood praised it as being a “great contribution to what we’re doing here.”
“The industry that we studied in this project may not be the industry I am looking at working in,” Yadav said. “However, I am very interested in general data-analysis roles, and from that perspective it was good working on this project.”