BADM 4001: Business Leader Launch is an experiential learning course by Prof. Wendy Wagner, completed by all business administration students. The Nashman Center hosts one section of this course, with opportunities for students to work with local nonprofit and public service organizations, leveraging their business skills to contribute to these organizations’ capacity to serve our community and address social change. Students use marketing and communication skills, project management, volunteer management, data analysis, and other business skills to help community partners build capacity and impact. Each student engaged in a long-term service project with their partner organization in which they could apply their knowledge from their business classes and other education experiences.
Students complete projects designed by the staff of local community-serving organizations like the Foggy Bottom Association, the Foggy Bottom West End Village, Little Friends for Peace, Raising a Village Foundation, Centronia, Age-Friendly DC, and the GW Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Clinic.
For information about Community Engaged Scholarship at GW: https://go.gwu.edu/cesc
Fall 2023
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 8
Time Reported: 409.50
Community Partners:
| CP | # of students at each site |
| Foggy Bottom West End Village | 1 |
| Latino Student Fund | 1 |
| Foggy Bottom Association | 1 |
| Little Friends for Peace | 2 |
| Capitol Hill Village | 1 |
| Horton’s Kids | 1 |
What students did at each service site:
- Foggy Bottom West End Village - Communications Intern: In this position, the student worked to improve the Village’s traditional communications and updated the organization’s social media platforms in order to increase public visibility of the organization and increase their membership.
- Latino Student Fund - Communications Intern: The Student engaged in outreach to multiple organizations that LSF partners with in order to promote flyers and information from LSF. The student also learned how to effectively communicate details and goals of an event in a compelling way through their outreach. In this position, the student also reached out to local schools to obtain tutor’s for a flagship tutoring program being started by LSF.
- Foggy Bottom Association - Membership Director: This student in their role researched and targeted key stakeholders and potential new members for distribution of Foggy Bottom Association promotional content and information. They also contributed to the organization’s social media accounts in an effort to boost membership within the organization. The student also communicated and engaged with multiple staff members in weekly meetings to generate ideas to increase membership.
- Little Friends for Peace - Volunteer Coordinator: The student in this position engaged in various projects and weekly meetings with staff at LFFP. They also had the opportunity to participate in events with various organizations and schools that LFFP partners with including Peace Circles.
- Horton’s Kids - Volunteer Membership: The student in this position learned how to effectively use Salesforce for the position, and with this knowledge helped the organization manage their volunteer database and created a volunteer shift schedule to streamline volunteer organization. The student also continuously tracked and updated volunteer attendance.
- Little Friends for Peace - Social Media Coordinator: In this position, the student created a content creation strategy, and produced posts for LFFP’s various social media platforms, in collaboration with staff at the organization to ensure that posts were creative and accurately represented the organization’s events. The student also had the opportunity to also engage in direct volunteering with the organization.
Student Comments:
“I've had a wonderful time getting to know all the kids, staff, and other volunteers of
LFFP and I am incredibly privileged and excited to continue working with the LFFP team in the Spring!” - Student who served with Little Friends for Peace
“I was able to experience LFFP's unique talent to connect with others and connect
others with peace through the retreat at Archbishop Carroll Highschool and my
continual to work to create creative posts for the LFFP social media page.” – Student
who served with Little Friends for Peace
"I had an amazing time with the kids and seeing them really open up and begin to respect one another. I also loved seeing how into the Dr. game they got, and seeing how it really changed their perspective on the whole event." - Student who served with Little Friends for Peace
"I've had a wonderful time getting to know all the kids, staff, and other volunteers of LFFP and I am incredibly privileged and excited to continue working with the LFFP team in the Spring!"- Student who served with Little Friends for Peace
Spring 2023
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 23
Time Reported: 168
Examples of Student Projects
Rooted: Business skills mentoring for Young Female Leaders Program
Students assisted in facilitating the Young Female Leaders Business Skills program. This program is for girls ages 10-14 in the DC area, who are interested in creating, developing, and exploring entrepreneur and leadership skills.
During the semester, students worked to develop activities for youth sessions, created materials for sessions, and aided with capacity building and communications to inspire youth to learn basic business skills.
Centronia: Market Research and Nutrition Program Assessment
Students worked with GW nutrition researcher Dr. Karina Lora (School of Public Health) in an on-going action research project with community partner CentroNía. Dr. Lora operates a public education program on nutrition, combining lessons for children in the CentroNía pre-school programs with written materials shared weekly with their parents. The aim of this project is to gather information from parents about their needs related to providing healthy meals, as well as the efficacy of the weekly information shared with them through this program.
Students assisted by interviewing/surveying parents as they picked up their children from pre-school. Students then worked to compile the data from this information gathering to create a report for Dr. Lora to inform and improve her nutrition program.
Little Friends for Peace: Volunteer Coordination
Little Friends For Peace (LFFP) welcomes adults and youth to experience, learn and practice peace through our various peace education programs. We believe that all people can create homes, classrooms, teams and workplaces where everyone gives, everyone gains, and everyone wins.
The student handled communications with volunteers, recruitment of new volunteers, and help create more efficient and effective management of volunteer data, including scheduling of volunteer service and training/orientation. During the semester, the student worked to keep track of volunteering inquiries, kept volunteers updated on opportunities, and kept the volunteer sign up sheet updated as new programs started.
Student Quotes:
"Rooted OT (entrepreneurship mentoring program for girls) has impacted me greatly, I have learned so much in my time here. My final takeaway from our last session with one of the girls was that fear is okay, and it's important to feel confident in yourself. One of the girls was afraid of being told "No" and I realized that even today I myself still have this fear. If someone says no, it does not mean you failed, it just means you have the opportunity to grow and be better."
"This week was a great experience as I was able to see the community that C3 serves. It was interesting to see all the community organizations that are located in the Greenleaf residential area and how they provide to the community. I got to see the direct impact and the close-knit community that has been created."
"The impact on me was that I gained valuable skills in market research, data collection, analysis, and communication. I also learned about the importance of good nutrition and the role it plays in promoting health and well-being. Working with Dr. Lora and CentroNía gave me the opportunity to apply my skills in a real-world setting and to make a positive impact on the community."
Fall 2022
Professor: Wendy Wagner
Students Reporting: 18
Time Reported: 893
Examples of Student Projects
Age-Friendly DC
Age-Friendly DC is an agency in the Mayor's office that focuses on factors that contribute to Washington, DC being a great city to grow older in. For this project, several students focused on an "Age-Friendly Business" project, communicating to local businesses across the city the existing research on practices that help make businesses easier for an aging population to work with.
Horton's Kids
Horton's Kids provides tutoring and mentoring programs to children in Ward 8. One student assisted with Volunteer Management processes, including the development of a new Volunteer Handbook aimed at helping to bring volunteer on-boarding to scale. Another student conducted data analysis on the children's learning outcome indicators, helping the organization make the case for the effectiveness of their approach.
