Course Overview

This course is designed to provide students with an experience that combines classroom learning, reading, technical skills, marketing, financial analysis, business process reengineering, consulting, and multicultural business management issues while working with a real business. In-class presentations and work sessions will revolve around the specific problems or opportunities each team is working on. The experience will help students gain practical experience in managing in a multicultural environment, consulting, and various aspects of marketing, financial, and business process analysis. Additionally, students will be able to link learning from a wide array of business disciplines to see how changes in one area affect the growth of the company as a whole. This integrative course will require students to use knowledge across business functional disciplines.

Field Study

Students will work in teams of 5 or 6 with small start-up companies in the Bellevue area. These projects are designed to help students learn to identify growth opportunities or business problems, design a strategy to capture the growth opportunity, or solve the problem and implement the proposed strategy.

Typically these projects require students to learn new technology skills (web design, project management, business process mapping, database development, operational analysis, etc.) The projects are multi-faceted. Student teams are assisted by advisors from the Business Division Advisory Board and other business mentors. These external advisors provide students with insights, industry trends and consulting expertise.

Teams will be required to meet with their businesses and advisors outside of class hours. Individuals need to be familiar with public transit or have transportation available.

Learning Materials

Students will use Multicultural Entrepreneurship, a book that is being written by Leslie Lum of Bellevue Community College, Thad Spratlen and Michael Verchot of the University of Washington. The chapters are linked below.  Additional materials are also available. Students will make extensive use of library databases and other sources of information on the web with specific focus on Census information. All students are expected to learn to use Word, Power Point, Excel, Front Page, Project and Visio. Most teams will mount a company website for their businesses.

This webpage is created to assist in teaching students of Leslie Lum.  It does not reflect the opinions or the position of Bellevue Community College.

Last updated 4/14/09