Smeal Seeks Corporate Project Submissions for APEX Course
Business school students often supplement their regimen of case studies with real world projects. To provide its MBA students access to real world challenges, Penn State’s Smeal College of Business is currently accepting project submissions from companies for its Applied Professional Experience (APEX) program.
APEX is a capstone experience for second year MBA students. The students work in teams of four to five people on challenges provided by real world businesses. The students are supervised by a program director. Previous clients of the APEX program include a diverse range of companies, from small start ups to large corporations like Motorola, Dell, BD Biosciences, and Johnson & Johnson. Companies do not pay a fee to participate in the program, but the companies are required to cover student expenses for the project, including travel if necessary.
Students benefit from this program by having the chance to apply previous experience and the skills they learned in business school to a real problem. In addition, APEX benefits the companies that provide projects. The company gains motivated students with a range of talents to work on a problem for them, and they also get a chance to work with students that they may later consider as part of their hiring pool. The real world experience can turn into a real world opportunity after business school.
Student groups from previous years of the APEX program have worked on many different types of project, including developing sustainability recommendations for a Fortune 1000 firm and developing a launch strategy for a consumer product goods company.
