Tom Walker is the CEO of DroneUp, a company that uses drones for delivery.
McKenna Howenstine|Marlin Chronicle
Students learn life lessons through planning the Business Conference.
The Fall 2024 Marlin Business Conference (MBC) occurred from Nov. 18 to Nov. 21 and consisted of an opening ceremony and dinner, business workshops, a career development expo, mock interviews, competitions between business students and a presentation from FBI agents.
The mission statement of the Fall 2024 MBC is “To inspire, to educate and to empower the greater Marlin community to achieve new heights.”
The opening ceremony featured speeches from the Business Conference co-CEO and soccer player, senior Kaitlyn Duswalt, the Chief of Staff, junior Bryant Cotterell, and keynote speaker Tom Walker. Walker is the founder of DroneUp, a company that uses drones to deliver packages. Walker spoke about the beginnings of his company, how they were boosted through delivering COVID-19 tests during the pandemic and the difficulties of competing with big businesses like Amazon.
MBC co-CEO Kaitlyn Duswalt commences the ceremony.’
McKenna Howenstine|Marlin Chronicle
The conference is organized by students taking MBE-301: Principles of Management. The students fund the conference itself through hosting fundraisers. In order to fundraise for this conference, students hosted concession stands at sports games, did a car wash and partnered with a Krispy Kreme location. “In every aspect of what we do, students are involved in going and working with people who are potential speakers, the activities that are going to be taking place,” said Frank Futyma, lecturer in Management, Business and Economics, the professor for the course.
“A lot of it had to do with the fundraising, with organizing the concessions and car washes we did. It was a lot of quality control, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, making sure the staff was working appropriately,” said Cotterell, reflecting on his role as chief of staff.
Learning better teamwork skills was a common theme from members of the class. “We really had to lean on each other to figure things out, not even just in our class, like we had to reach out to Heather Beatty with catering and President Miller. Everybody had to come together,” Duswalt said.
“Meeting people through this experience has been really rewarding,” Duswalt said, reflecting on the experiences she had as co-CEO of the MBC. “One time at the concession stands, there were a bunch of children, like wreaking havoc, going crazy, and it was my teammate’s little brother. He was banging on the door because we told him he couldn’t come in but that made him want to come in the concession stands. Professor Futyma was cracking jokes with him earlier so I think he thought we were his buds. But he just started pounding on the doors and then climbing over, and I was just like ‘where is your mom?’ But it was just funny, it almost felt like a family dynamic.”
The other co-CEO for the MBC was Giovanni Musiello. “One of the main things I had to do was we had to pick teams that were going to lead certain aspects of the business conference,” Musiello said on his role as co-CEO, “We had a whole fundraising team as well that we had to pick out […]. So we did donuts from Krispy Kreme, we did a car wash fundraiser, we did concessions at school games and we tried to find any other sources of revenue that could have fit the bill for the amount of product we had to pay for […].”
During the MBC, three competitions between business students are hosted. The first is a “Shark Tank” competition, which uses the concept from the show with the same namesake. The participants in this competition are students in the MBE-101: Introductory Business course. In this competition, students present a product idea to a panel of judges, and at the end, the student who is voted best by the judges wins, and takes home the prize of a 50 dollar gift card.
The second competition is a business ethics competition. Competitors in this competition are students in MBE-400: Managerial Ethics. The overview for the competition says: “Participants are tasked with analyzing case studies or hypothetical situations, identifying ethical dilemmas and proposing solutions that align with ethical frameworks and best practices.”
The third is a consulting competition, which the event overview describes: “Students form teams and act as business consultants with the emphasis on the use of technology to improve business for clients.” All three of these competitions are intended to help students develop necessary skills to succeed in a corporate work environment and to increase students’ problem solving skills.
The MBC also has one off-campus event, located at the HIVE, a business development center in Virginia Beach. The HIVE partners with Virginia Wesleyan to offer no-cost workshops to students in topics such as entrepreneurship and public speaking. The HIVE also offers help for local businesses with funding, licensing, zoning and more. At the HIVE, students in attendance heard a speech from Ihsane Mouak, the current leader of the HIVE.
By Aiden Croghan
accroghan@vwu.edu
