Tag: community

I can’t believe that it’s April.  I can’t believe that this is Admitted Students’ Weekend.

Where has time gone?  I remember exactly where I was last year when this weekend occurred and we weren’t in St. Louis.  No, we couldn’t attend the festivities because one of my dearest friends was getting married and we were attending her wedding.

I remember being anxious that we couldn’t attend.  What will we miss?  Will everyone meet great friends over the weekend leaving us trying to meet people when everyone else has their group of friends?

WAIT A MINUTE.  Am I missing an MBA admitted students weekend or missing my first day of middle school?

As much as I was able to rationalize how missing this weekend would not be the end of the world, I was still anxious that we would miss something that everyone else would discuss when we all gathered together again in August.

My husband, Turner, would have a chance to meet fellow students during orientation and in classes, while I sat at home and looked for a job in my new city.  SO in many ways, this was one of the few times (I thought), I would have to meet other partners.

Then I realized something else, we were moving to St. Louis in July and Turner was attending Olin no matter what.  So while a lot of prospective students were attending to see if Olin was the right fit for them, Turner had already decided that it was where he wanted to earn his MBA.

So now you might be wondering why all of these things are so important to me and if my husband was attending Olin, why is it so important for ME to attend this weekend.  Truth be told, I was hoping to meet another partner who was already locked into Olin to be an email buddy with (an new age pen-pal, if you will), someone that I imagined would also be moving from a big, east coast city and adjusting to the midwestern lifestyle and we could swap transition stories and maybe even meet for coffee before Olin officially started in August. This way,  I would already know one person and have one friend.  But as you already know, that didn’t happen.

The good news is that I have since met many fellow partners, like myself, who are new to the area and together we go on many fun adventures exploring St. Louis.  But more on that later…

For now, as my calendar fills up with Admitted Students Day weekend activities, I am so excited to meet with potential students and their partners who may not be enrolling at Olin, but will be supporting their partners as they begin their MBA.

My friends are all excited for the weekend, too, and we hope that we have a chance to meet you.  There will be so many opportunities to see if Olin is the right program for you and rumor has it that some of the 2014 MBA class made their decision to attend Olin based on this weekend.

If you can’t attend the weekend and you are even a fraction as anxiety-driven as I am, do not worry.  You are not alone, many soon-to-be Olin students can’t make it.  There are MANY opportunities for you to meet other Olin partners later this summer.  Even though we haven’t officially met yet, I very much look forward to meeting you.

This past November, I came back from a late night of going out with some friends, and opened my computer to an email from my Consumer Behavior Professor Joe Goodman. The email described a website called Rally St. Louis.  I read through the description,  and the email couldn’t have been more than 25 words and a link to the website.  I lazily clicked on it and was immediately intrigued.

Rally St. Louis is an online platform for people of St. Louis to submit ideas to make St. Louis a better place.  Once ideas are submitted they become public, and people can vote on the ideas they like once a day.  The ideas with the most votes at the end of each month get “valued” at a certain goal of money and moved onto the funding stage.  Once the idea gets submitted to the funding stage anyone can donate any amount of money to help the ideas become a reality.  The whole idea is to give people with good ideas a voice and a vehicle for their voice to be heard.

Having grown up in St. Louis my whole life, I thought this was an awesome opportunity to submit an idea that I have always had a certain passion for but no way to make it happen or get it started. My idea, Project Blacktop, is to turn empty unused lots in the city of St. Louis into basketball courts.  The idea is to beautify these empty lots with basketball courts which look nice and appealing when you drive by them.  The continuation of Project Blacktop is to host youth basketball clinics for neighborhood kids, and summer adult pickup basketball games and leagues.  The idea is for these courts to be active, positive spaces for the community.  The idea relies on the courts being used regularly and becoming positive spaces for community building events.

That night I typed up a quick description of my idea, and submitted it to the RallySTL website.   I wrote about two paragraphs basically describing what I wrote in the paragraph above, and placed a random stock image picture of an urban basketball court under the description (it was an awful picture).   The whole process of submitting my idea took about 15 minutes.  After I submitted my idea I had a URL that I could copy and paste and send to whomever I wanted.  I blasted it out to my Facebook friends that night via a Facebook status saying “Please vote for my idea!”.  I slept in the next day and woke up as the #4 vote getter on the entire website. It was the first week of the contest, so I only had around 40 votes.  I continued to post on my Facebook everyday, along with sending the link out to family and friends with a quick description behind the whole idea.

Before I knew it, I was about 200 votes in the lead of all the other ideas and quickly approaching 1000 votes for the month of December.  Other ideas were picking up steam and became clear frontrunners to finish within the top 5 at the end of the month.

RallySTL makes it incredibly easy to make a difference in the city.  They give you the portal you need to do your own marketing.  It is the quickest way to raise awareness about an idea that you are passionate about.

Being at Wash U really helped me raise awareness and votes.  Students are a young tech- savvy audience who check their Facebook accounts religiously.  All I had to do was post the link and before I knew it people who wanted to do anything but study for finals were distracted by voting for Project Blacktop daily.

The end of December rolled around, and I was #4 in total votes for the month and my idea was moved onto the “Funding” stage of RallySTL.  My project was valued at $10,000, which means that I have 90 days to “crowdfund” my idea to reach a goal of $10,000.  RallySTL makes funding easy as well, because once again I had a URL I could send to whomever I wanted.  I sent it to friends, family, teachers, and local businesses. And before I knew it I had people donating money everyday.

I’m currently in the middle of the funding stage and leading all other RallySTL ideas with 22% of my project funded.  This whole experience has happened so fast, and honestly it has become more than I had ever imagined. That night that I answered an email from a professor and took 15 minutes to submit an idea became something I’m extremely proud of and a great thing for my resume.  I receive 10-15 emails everyday from people in the community who have seen my idea and want to donate, or congratulate me, or give me feedback on how to improve my funding strategy.  I have made so many amazing connections in the St. Louis community and Project Blacktop has garnered some great press over the past 3-4 months.

I wrote this blog post to prove that it is easy to make a difference. If you have an idea, speak up, let it be heard, and try it out. See what people have to say about it.  You don’t need to be a rich philanthropist, a social policy leader, or the mayor.  I’m a 20 year old college junior with $66.63 in my bank account right now and I am on my way to raising over $10,000 and starting a charity that makes a difference in the St. Louis community.  I encourage all Olin students to bring their ideas to life through all of the amazing resources Wash U and St. Louis offer, whether it be RallySTL, Olin Sustainability Challenge, or the Skandalaris Center.

Below are some links to further educate you on RallySTL and Project Blacktop.

Tim Cooney, BSBA 2014

Project Blacktop:

http://www.rallystl.org/Ideas/Detail/43

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4IPpn0DR6w

 Hoop photo by Ryan Gregor

After a year of planning, last Friday afternoon we celebrated the final presentations of the Olin Sustainability Case Competition (OSCC)!  This was the fourth year of the competition, which began as a way to increase awareness about sustainability as it relates to business practices.

This year, we had more than 20 teams express interest in the competition. The case topic was “Blight, Plight, and Urban Flight: Stimulating the Sustainable Development of Vacant Land in the City of St. Louis.” For the first year ever, the case writers decided to take the case off-campus and work with administrators from the City of St. Louis to develop a case that would produce implementable ideas to reduce the amount of vacant land around our city.

After weeks of reviewing submissions, the committee narrowed it down to our final three teams. These teams presented their ideas to a room of about 100 people, including our corporate sponsors from Novus and Tarlton, as well as a prestigious judging panel made up of administrators from around the Washington University campus and the City of St. Louis.

At the end of the day, Team 4 and Team 13 tied for first place and each team won $4,000!

Team 4: Watch Team 4’s Video Submission
Brian Arnold, MS in Finance 2013
Deona DeClue, Juris Doctor 2013
Cody Greer, PhD Neuroscience 2017
Benjamin Mueller, MS Construction Management 2015

Team 13: Watch Team 13’s Video Submission
Megan Berry, Master of Architecture 2014
Grace Goldstein, Master of Architecture 2015
Grant McCracken, BA Architecture and English Literature 2014

And Team 8 came in as our runners-up winning a prize of $2,000!

Team 8: Watch Team 8’s Video Submission
Steven Boughton, MBA 2014
Daniela Pacurar, MBA 2014
John (Turner) Peters, MBA 2014

Be on the look-out for the Fifth Annual Olin Sustainability Case Competition next year!  In the meantime, be sure to congratulate our 2013 winning teams!

Three new signs in the alcoves flanking the main stairway in Simon Hall are inviting the community to discover the Olin Blog.

The blog made a soft launch over the semester break with staff and program directors contributing content.  Faculty and student bloggers will begin posting this month.

The decision to launch the blog is part of the school’s broader social media strategy to strengthen Olin’s voice and presence online.

For more information on Olin’s social media strategy, please watch the video below.

The real power lies in connecting our audiences with our Olin personalities—our story tellers. With the power of social media, the advancement of the multimedia experience, and the capability of blogs to highlight personalities and stories, we see an opportunity to bring to life the heartbeat of what makes Olin unique.

The blog is designed to reflect and serve all members of the Olin community, as well as visitors, with multiple categories and tags to facilitate searching. With contributors from every program, the group blog will contain valuable information that is updated and refreshed daily.

The Olin community shares their heartfelt and funny wishes for the upcoming year. We’d like to extend our fondest wishes to you and yours during the holidays and throughout the new year.

Tell us your holiday wish.

Filmed by Emma Kane (Arts & Sciences ’15) and Benjamin Schwartz (Arts & Sciences ’15). Edited by Mike Martin Media.

Visitors to Olin often comment on our community’s active engagement and collaboration—part of what makes us distinctly Olin. We look to enhance that engagement with the launch of the Olin Blog.

Olin community members—students, faculty, staff, alumni, business partners and supporters—will connect and share valuable content, ideas and insights.

This multi-authored blog will be the online heartbeat of the school, bringing to life the Olin experience.

I look forward to watching this blog grow and connect our audiences as we move into our second century of creating knowledge, inspiring individuals, and transforming business.