This article is published as an online exclusive in Vol. 136, Issue 8 of the Lake Forest College Stentor.
By Jovana Jovanovska ‘23
Staff Writer
Classes at Lake Forest College allow students to explore their interests in innovative and creative methods. In the spring 2021 semester, students in the Principles of Marketing course (BUSN 225) taught by Lecturer in Finance Professor Barry Hollingsworth had an opportunity to integrate the material they have learned throughout the semester in a project where they were given a task to design a website from scratch. Students were divided in different groups where they worked together on coming up with an idea and developing it. Donna Rwabuhemba ‘22 and Cheyanne Gardiner ‘22 are one group that met with the Stentor to share their business idea.
Rwabuhemba is majoring in international relations and business, whereas Gardiner has a self-designed major in digital art and animation, and she’s minoring in business. For their future careers, Rwabuhemba would like to work for a business advisory firm, while Gardiner is interested in storytelling and would like to create manga for African Americans. Both of the students decided to take BUSN 225 as a requirement for their major or minor. When asked what they like about the class, Rwabuhemba said that “it challenges the students to be more creative.” She believes that marketing, media, and strategic communication are popular, and sharpening skills in this area would be useful for her, as in a few weeks, she will be a rising senior. Gardiner stated that she loves Professor Hollingsworth’s teaching style. “There are so many hard classes and this one is just a bit laid back and it relieves me. I also like everything that comes behind marketing, now I’ve learned about different kinds of ways to approach people and to get people’s attention,” she said.
Gardiner mentioned that she appreciated Professor Hollingsworth’s encouragement to achieve your dreams and goals. She also likes that he breaks down success methods practically, so that the future doesn’t seem so scary. Both of the students agreed that the most significant learning experience from the course is the project of creating a website. When asked to elaborate on their project, the group shared that the task they were given was to create a website for marketing an already existing product or to come up with a personal concept. The group’s initial idea was to make a comprehensible list of activities one can do in Chicago, such as places to eat, sleep, go shopping.
The project was mainly intended to help tourists, but they soon realized that people could easily find this information with a quick Google search. In the middle of the semester, they changed their idea and decided to focus their website on the secret gems of Chicago. “When people think of Chicago, they often think of deep dish pizza, but there are so many little spots that we don’t know about. We wanted to dedicate our website by giving a platform to small business and unique hipster suburbs of Chicago to advertise their services,” Rwabuhemba shared. The group found the places they wanted to promote by approaching people they knew and asking them where they like to go, along with social media research. “The website is for people who haven’t been to Chicago but also for people who are from here, because Chicago is such a huge place,” Gardiner stated.
The students thought this was a very helpful project for them. Gardiner has created websites before, but she enjoys the process of bringing an idea to life because it feels very entrepreneurial. Rwabuhemba found this experience useful because she had never created a website before. “I had a Tumblr when I was really young but it’s not something I would put on a resume. Being able to say that I did market research in an area that was missing and made a website with my partner is impressive,” Rwabuhemba said.
Courses and professors at Lake Forest College enable their students to get out of their comfort zone and work on meaningful projects that can continue even outside of the classroom, and the BUSN 225 website project is just one of these examples.
