Community One
Vision and Mission
Community One is a community service program operated by the University of Michigan-Flint’s Michigan Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. Its vision is to see that students, faculty, organizations and businesses have the opportunity to work together to solve problems and address issues that are important to organizations throughout our community and beyond.
Community One’s mission is to match the operational and strategic needs of external organizations with the knowledge, skills, abilities, and interests of our students and faculty. We aim to facilitate the exchange of ideas, help with the creation, design, and implementation of programs and provide organizations with the assistance needed to complete projects.
Why It is Important to Our Students
Providing students with applied experience in solving contemporary problems using leading-edge theories, concepts, and tools is critical to their professional development. Community One projects affords students the opportunity to engage with organizational leaders that are facing a diverse array of challenges and opportunities. The process of assisting organizations to meet challenges and capitalize on opportunities requires critical thinking and pushes our students to improve their analytical, creative, communication and relationship building skills.
How the Process Works
Community One first attempts to find an existing match between a course and the project or issue needs of our community organizations and businesses. If a match is identified, a University of Michigan - Flint faculty member will contact you to discuss details such as proposed timeline, contact hours and methods, scope of project, and desired deliverables to ensure everyone has shared expectations.
If a reasonable match is not found or cannot be created quickly enough, then you will have the opportunity to have your organization’s needs met through a mutually agreeable internship relationship.
Let Us Know How We Can Help
If you are an organizational leader, director, or manager that might benefit from having University of Michigan - Flint students and faculty assist you, then please to take a few minutes to tell us about your organization and the project you want completed, or the issue you would like assistance with. 
(Your application will be reviewed internally by select faculty. Information submitted is confidential.)
Current professors/classes looking for projects:
Some of our faculty teach courses that require students to work closely with external organizational leaders or community members. This list (it is continuously subject to updates – so please check often) can be seen below.
-
(click title to view request)
Professor: Dale Tuttle
Email: btuttle@umflint.edu
Phone: (734) 474-0550
Target organization or industry for project: Any
Description of project, scope and deliverables:
Student teams will conduct an analysis of an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses as well as assess the opportunities and threats that exist in the organization's industry and overall environment. This is a first-year course and thus the goal is to provide students with an overview of basic business concepts and protocols while introducing the foundations of the various functional areas of business. The organization and community members that participate in this SWOT Analysis Project can expect to spend an hour or two discussing their organizations' internal and external environments with students either through face-to-face interviews, phone conversations, or email exchanges. Students are expected to describe the organization's SWOT while providing their insights regarding recommended action steps that the organization ought to take. This Community One Project gives organizations and first year undergraduate students the opportunity to learn from each other.
posted: May 2, 2012
____________________________________________________________________________
Professor: Gregory A. Lawrence. Ph.D.
Email: glaurenc@umflint.edu
Phone: (810) 424-5527
Target organization or industry for project: Any
Description of project, scope and deliverables:
Students in this course use skills developed across the spectrum of their undergraduate business courses, with an emphasis on human resource management and organizational behavior courses, to develop, implement, and evaluate a training program. The development process includes assessing the training needs of a group based on an identified performance gap. Based on the data generated in the needs assessment phase, students develop a training program, concentrating on content and delivery methods. They then evaluate the effectiveness of this program, comparing pre-training and post-training performance of the subjects, and develop recommendations for improvement of the program based on these outcomes. Past groups have developed training programs concerning campus/workplace safety, sexual harassment, cross-cultural communication, and team building skills. Other potential topics are certainly possible, depending on organizations' needs.
posted: April 16, 2012
____________________________________________________________________________
Professor: Dale Tuttle
Email: btuttle@umflint.edu
Phone: (734) 474-0550
Target organization or industry for project: Any
Description of project, scope and deliverables:
BUS 489 encourages senior-level students to adopt the viewpoint of the chief executive officer (or Gen. Mgr.) as they attempt to understand the process of integrating an organization's functional areas. Students are encouraged to explore the processes of managing and exercising judgement in evaluation and execution of action plans. This Community One Project offers organizations an analysis of their strategic plan and implementation. Students will interview leadership and other key members of the organization to determine the alignment and connectivity among what organizational members are actually doing, individual and organizational objectives, organizational procedures, processes, strategies, organizational mission, vision and underlying values. Participants ought to expect providing a few hours of access to organizational leaders and members and commit to attending a student team presentation. Each student team will provide a written report to the organization.
posted: May 2, 2012
____________________________________________________________________________
Professor: Quamrul Mazumder
Email: qmazumde@umflint.edu
Phone: (810) 762-3131
Target organization or industry for project: Any
Description of project, scope and deliverables:
The objective of this course is to provide experiential learning through community engagement projects. We are looking for short-term projects (i.e. 3 months corresponding with Fall and Winter semesters) in the area of renewable energy. Students can perform feasibility studies and energy audits. Takeaways for the organizations include receiving recomendations of alternative energy devices and systems that will provide economic benefits. Specifically, cost-benefit analyses of current energy systems compared to alternative energy systems will be executed and offered to the company or organization.
posted: June 5, 2012
____________________________________________________________________________
...
____________________________________________________________________________
Professor application to add a class or project to the list.
Past Projects and Success
