The Heath Integrated Business & Engineering Program gives students the opportunity to combine in-depth strategy & decision-making processes. Each of our courses is designed to teach students the fundamentals of where/how business and engineering cross-sect. With real world projects students are introduced to leadership and communication skills that help prepare them for future employment. The ability to seamlessly operate across business and engineering divisions reduces ‘silos’. Companies lend their time to our program by either creating a project or giving our students an existing issue for them to work through. Working in small groups, students gain an understanding of working in teams across majors to create solutions. This past fall our sophomores and juniors both participated in team based projects:
Engineering Fundamentals – EF203 (Sophomores)
Our students broke into 11 separate groups of two wherein they picked a problem of their choice and worked together to create a solution. Groups consisted of an engineering student and a business student. Projects varied from working through issues of race/bias in the workplace to apps specialized in dealing with medical plans. Our student’s first dive into working across colleges & majors was a great success with many new perspectives gained and a foundation laid for their next two years in Heath IBEP.
Business Administration – BUAD 300 (Juniors)
The Heath IBEP Junior cohort worked on two projects in Fall 2020.
The first project for Proctor & Gamble was related to the effects of COVID-19. Students analyzed changes in customer buying habits and P&G’s supply chain and distribution. Small student groups looked at how P&G could modify their sales, marketing, supply chain, and manufacturing strategies to align with the current COVID-19 environment.
The second project detailed the creation of a new electric car charging station on UT’s campus. This project included a marketing, finance & accounting, and implementation team. The goal was to create a functioning business plan on a new charging station that would generate higher usage and more revenue in comparison to UT’s current charging stations. Students worked in small teams on the creation of their business plan and presented their completed idea to members of UT’s Parking and Transit Services, K.U.B (Knoxville’s Utility Service), and Seven States Power Corp.
Some of our students will be continuing this project on their own