Rosemary Lapka, MBA/MS ’12 (center, in yellow), co-founded Ross Responds, which took some 31 graduate students to New Orleans in August to volunteer with social enterprises.
Students Initiate ‘Ross Responds’ to Inspire Social Entrepreneurship Like many MBA students preparing to enter Ross, dualdegree candidates Adam Carver, MBA/MS ’12, and Rosemary Lapka, MBA/MS ’12, were seeking a life-changing experience. And they weren’t content to wait for classes to begin. Carver and Lapka are members of the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, enrolled at both Ross and U-M’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. This summer they launched the student service initiative Ross Responds, fueled by their mutual angst over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Taking their cue from the Ross travel program MTrek, Lapka and Carver decided to organize incoming and current MBA volunteers for a weeklong venture to the Gulf. “We wanted to get graduate students into another part of the country to experience how this disaster is affecting people and see where they could contribute their professional skills,” Lapka says. “They would then have that experience and a fundamentally different perspective to bring back to the core.” Be the Change In June Lapka and Carver began cold-calling the Nature Conservancy and other organizations to assess opportunities and offer their services. But it soon became apparent the Ross students would lack the training and clearance to deal with hazardous materials related to the devastating oil spill. At the same time it became equally clear that New Orleans was still struggling to survive the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — in addition to numerous perennial social problems that have long plagued the city. So Ross Responds refocused its efforts. “We wanted to address social problems, pervasive not only in New Orleans but all over the country, with the hope that our students would say, ‘Hey we can do this in any city,’” Carver says. Lapka and Carver ultimately signed up 10 organizations, from charter schools to groups that serve ex-convicts. Partners included Liberty’s Kitchen, the Building Block, and Sustainable
Environmental Enterprises LLC, touching upon at-risk youth, green construction, and renewable energy (pictured below). From an initial response of more than 60 future and current students, Lapka and Carver signed up 29 volunteers to participate in the launch of Ross Responds. Heather Byrne and Kate Bonk of the Ross Office of Student Life championed their efforts and offered additional support. On the Road By August Ross Responds was en route to New Orleans, undertaking three consecutive weeklong phases of service. Groups of about 10 volunteers traveled in each phase, and two to three students worked with each organization for about five days. They contributed everything from marketing and operations expertise to data entry and manual labor. “It exposed students to the operational realities facing both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that have adopted social corporate missions,” Lapka says. “For many students this was their first exposure to social enterprise, and students gained new perspective on the different capabilities, needs, and challenges of these valuable startups.” Feedback from both students and Ross Responds’ partner organizations was so positive that Lapka and Carver plan to institutionalize the program at the University and beyond. They met with MBAs from Tulane University and Vanderbilt University with the goal of collaborating on new ventures in the future. The pair also plans to share lessons learned with other business schools that may choose to follow Ross’ lead. “We wanted students to witness how nontraditional commercial enterprises can be powerful forces for change, and then realize they could still reach their financial, professional, and personal goals by setting new expectations and breaking the conventional MBA model a little bit,’” says Carver. “That’s the higher goal.” —Deborah Holdship
fall 2010 Dividend
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