Starting this fall, Yale business students can get real life experience helping local businesses solve their problems.
The Yale School of Management clinic will offer free consulting services from second-year MBA students, who will tackle a problem or project for five businesses or nonprofits that are selected to participate.
“This has the potential to become something that is very meaningful to the community,” said Bruce Judson, a senior faculty fellow at the school, who will run the program. “Whether a business needs help analyzing the viability of an expansion, or a nonprofit is looking for a plan to accomplish its social mission more efficiently, we encourage them to apply.”
Judson, who specializes in helping small businesses that have few employees, said many MBA students already have experience in the business world before they get to Yale.
“The class will give them a chance to see where theory works and where it does not work,”Judson said. “They will work with people in the field, then discuss it back in the classroom.”
The new course is part of the school’s efforts to restructure the curriculum.
Business owners must commit to spending time with students from September to December. They must be small- to mid-size businesses located between Hartford and New York City. (AP)
