\n\tPublished: March 03, 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tFour years ago, Dennis McGrath, Vice President Global Test and Operations at Starbucks Corp., approached UW Bothell\u2019s School of Business to create a partnership where students could get involved in low-level testing and program development. But Associate Professor Surya Pathak challenged him to do more. \u201cHe told me I wasn\u2019t thinking big enough about this and we could make it much more significant,\u201d says McGrath. Although wary at first, McGrath agreed to take a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tSince then, select students in UW Bothell\u2019s Master of Business Administration program have worked on twenty projects addressing real questions facing McGrath\u2019s Global Operations Innovation team. \u201cWhat we usually do is that we have one big problem that is then distributed among multiple teams,\u201d says Pathak, who jointly leads the partnership through his Management Consulting class along with Mr. Brooks Gekler, an executive-in-residence at UW Bothell School of Business.. \u201cIf it is a large problem either we break it down into small projects and then we come up with a combined solution or we sometimes put multiple teams on the same problems and we get different perspectives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tEarly on in the program, McGrath\u2019s team asked the UW Bothell students to explore whether the caf\u00e9s and drive-thru stores should develop hand-held, point-of-sale (POS) devices based on the company\u2019s standards for service. The students recommended that the company should not pursue development of the POS for the caf\u00e9, but launch it in select drive-thru stores. \u201cThis was one of the early projects and I was a little apprehensive so I also had my own team work on it in the background,\u201d says McGrath. \u201cThe students were right on. The work that was produced by that class was of the same quality as if I would have hired an outside consultant and the conclusions that they drew are the conclusions that we adopted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tPathak says that the partnership with Starbucks aligns with the community-based learning focus that is becoming a signature of UW Bothell overall by giving his students practical experience working on real-world problems. \u201cIt allows them to take a very ambiguous project and learn how to scope it and figure out who the stakeholders are,\u201d he says. \u201cIt mimics what they would do in a real consulting job or in a company where you are basically an internal consultant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\tMcGrath says the program benefits Starbucks as well. \u201cIt is a development opportunity for many of the people on my team,\u201d he says. One of his team members decided to go back to school and earn an MBA at UW Bothell. Others have led class discussions and participated in poster sessions. \u201cIt is a great opportunity to see how these presentations are done and to see some of the tools that the students used,\u201d he says. \u201cIt has all around been a very mutually beneficial relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Published: March 03, 2015 Four years ago, Dennis McGrath, Vice President Global Test and Operations at Starbucks Corp., approached UW Bothell\u2019s School of Business to create a partnership where students could get involved in low-level testing and program development. But Associate Professor Surya Pathak challenged him to do more. \u201cHe told me I wasn\u2019t thinking…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":6458,"menu_order":34,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_is_archived":false,"_archived_contact_email":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9974","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"related_links":{"toggle_visibility":false,"link_1":null,"link_2":null,"link_3":null,"link_4":null,"link_5":null},"highlight_box":{"toggle_visibility":false,"title":"","content":"","button":null,"button_style":"angled-purple-button","button_screen_reader_text":""},"contact_type_1":{"toggle_visibility":true,"contact_title":"","email":"uwbnews@uw.edu","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"contact_type_2":{"toggle_visibility":false,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"social_media":{"toggle_visibility":false,"facebook_url":"","instagram_url":"","linkedin_url":"","twitter_url":"","youtube_url":""},"blog_archive_sidebar_visibility":false},"yoast_head":"\n