Faculty
Professors Gregg Fairbrothers, Joseph M. Hall, Julie B. Lang, William C. Martin, Richard J. McNulty, Stephen G. Powell
Objectives
The Tuck First-Year Project is a semester-long course in the spring of the first year that provides students the opportunity to
apply their core academic knowledge to a real-world problem;
gain practical experience in planning and executing a project;
tailor the curriculum to their individual goals.
Students work in self-selected teams of five on a project of their own choosing. Each team selects one of their members as the Engagement Manager, who is responsible for management of the project. Each team also works with a Faculty Advisor who meets with them weekly and coaches them through the process.
Most projects have an external client who provides motivation for the project and access to data and people in the target organization. The exception is entrepreneurial projects, in which the student team develops a business plan for a new product or service and pitches it to venture capitalists.
- Some examples of recent projects are:
- ARUP Group
A global design, planning, and engineering firm, Arup worked with a Tuck team to develop a business plan that will help the company incorporate sustainability initiatives as part of capital planning and business design, rather than on a case-by-case basis.
- Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
Team members worked with this Vermont-based roaster and distributor of organic and fair-trade coffee to develop a strategic corporate responsibility initiative to allay food-security problems in Nicaragua and South America.
- Mind Share
For this novel board game developed by Tuck student entrepreneur Kate Reiling T’09, team members studied the feasibility of entering the board-game industry, ran prototyping sessions, and created a detailed financial model and business plan for investors.
This course is designed to improve a student’s ability to:
apply academic knowledge in a practical setting;
plan, participate in, and manage a project effectively.
Successful first-year projects allow students to apply their academic training from the first-year core courses in a practical context. The Faculty Advisor will encourage teams to seek applications of their knowledge and will enable them to gain access to expertise where that is needed, either from other faculty or business experts. In many cases, teams will find they need to go beyond the basic skills they learned in the first year in order to adequately address the problems posed by their projects.
Learning to manage a project effectively is the second major focus of this course. Students will learn how to scope a project, develop a work plan, conduct primary and secondary research, develop a storyboard, and make an effective presentation.
Roles of the Engagement Manager and Faculty Advisor
Teams will select an Engagement Manager from among themselves at the start of the project. The role of the Engagement Manager is to coordinate the activities of the team members and to manage the overall execution of the project. The Engagement Manager will take a lead role in formulating the project work plan, and will monitor progress against the plan as the term progresses.
Each project team is assigned a Faculty Advisor at the start of the Spring term. (Students may work informally with Faculty Advisors during the Winter term as projects and teams are forming.) While the Faculty Advisor will work closely with the project team throughout the Spring term, the ultimate responsibility for the quality of the project rests with the student team.
The role of the Faculty Advisor is essentially that of a coach. The Faculty Advisor will encourage students to identify and work on their individual weaknesses during the project. He or she will coach them during the various stages of the process; for example in defining the key question, developing a work plan, developing a storyboard, and so on. He or she will also encourage the team to find resources, from faculty experts, business contacts, and so on. The Faculty Advisor will give periodic feedback on the project process and the quality of the work, and will grade students at the end of the project.
Related Courses
Introduction to Entrepreneurship: This Winter term mini-course provides an overview of the process of turning an idea into an enterprise. It is recommended for those with little or no entrepreneurial experience, and those who have an idea for a new business they would like to begin exploring. It is a natural foundation for students who wish to undertake an entrepreneurship project in the First-Year Project. It is highly recommended that at least one member of each entrepreneurship project take this course.
Collaborative Problem Solving: This Winter term mini-course focuses on the skills needed to solve problems in teams and to manage a team through an engagement with a client. It draws on the skills developed in the consulting industry, but it is relevant for all career paths. It is highly recommended that at least one member of each consulting project team take this course.
Milestones
While the First-Year Project officially is a spring term course, students need to begin to think about the project during the fall term. Teams begin to form in January as project ideas begin to be developed. Most projects ideas are developed by students, but the MBA Program Office also publicizes a number of projects that are proposed by faculty, alumni, or outsiders. By February 19th all teams must submit a Project Proposal, which briefly describes the project and names the members of the team. Project Proposals will be reviewed by Faculty Advisors and all students are expected to have an approved project by February 26th. Faculty Advisors will be available during January and February for consultation about project ideas.
Each consulting project will be designed around the following milestones:
Problem Statement
Issue/Hypothesis Tree
Work plan
Midterm Review
Storyboard
Final Presentation
Team Debrief Report
Entrepreneurship projects follow a related but somewhat different set of milestones:
Problem Statement
Review self- and team-assessments from FYP to plan group dynamics and roles
Work plan
Marketing Plan
Midterm Review
Financial Plan
Preliminary presentation review
Final Presentation
Team Debrief Report
The timing of these milestones will be tailored for each project by the team and the Faculty Advisor.
Requirements
The motivation for the First-Year project course is to get students out of the classroom and into the real world where they can begin to apply their academic knowledge and experience to practical problems and opportunities. Thus the first requirement of a project is that it involves a real problem or opportunity.
Many projects are performed for a client who is the owner of the problem. The client helps to motivate the project, provides information and feedback to the team, and serves as the ultimate judge of the real-world value of the project results. For a project to be successful, the client must be willing to interact regularly with the student team and provide information the team needs in their analysis, possibly including detailed financial data. With one exception, every FYP project must have a client. The exception is an entrpreneurial in which the new product or service idea that is the focus of the project was created by a student.
Every project should provide students with an opportunity to apply the academic knowledge they have acquired during the first year at Tuck. No project is likely to draw on all the subjects students have studied, but each project should require the student team to consider how they might apply their knowledge from several courses. Some of the courses that are often applied are Strategy, Marketing, Statistics, Decision Science, Operations, Accounting, Economics, and Finance. In one project in which the key question was “Can the client expand its product line profitably,” the team applied their academic knowledge by performing the following tasks:
Conducted a thorough market segmentation analysis
Developed, administered and analyzed a series of surveys
Assessed the customers’ willingness to pay
Identified the client’s strategic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
Analyzed distribution channel options
Built a financial model in order to project future cash flows and anticipate future capacity constraints and capital requirements
Projects must provide sufficient challenge for a team of five students over a nine-week term, but they must also be within the capabilities of the team. Teams are expected to devote the equivalent of one course worth of effort to the project and to treat it as a professional engagement. In many cases project recommendations will be implemented by the client, so projects are not mere academic exercises.
In summary, a Tuck First-Year Project must meet the following four requirements:
A real-world problem or opportunity
A willing client
An opportunity to apply academic knowledge
A realistic challenge.
Materials
Grading
The final team grade will be based on the following deliverables:
Problem Statement 10%
Work plan 10%
Storyboard/Preliminary presentation 10%
Team Debrief Report 20%
Final Presentation 50%
The grades of individual students may differ from the team grade in cases where the student makes an extraordinary or inadequate contribution to the project.
The primary audience for the Final Presentation is the client or clients, although the Faculty Advisor and other evaluators will attend. This presentation should be a fully professional effort, using all the appropriate tools from Managerial Communications. Each student is required to present.
The purpose of the Team Debrief Report is to allow teams to reflect on their experience during the project and to describe their activities to the Faculty Advisor. Final Reports are typically 7-10 pages, excluding appendices. They should describe the purpose of the project, the activities undertaken, as well as the results and recommendations. The Report should conclude with a section describing the lessons the team learned individually and as a group.
The Final Presentation will be graded on five criteria:
- project planning and execution: the ability of the team to manage the project throughout the term;
- analytic rigor: the intellectual depth and quality of the analysis of the client’s problem;
- integration of academic knowledge: the depth and breadth of academic skills brought to bear on the project;
- client satisfaction: the degree to which the project satisfies the client;
- presentation: the quality of the Final Presentation as a professional communication.
Schedule
December 7
Getting Started on the FYP
Informal session to describe the FYP
January 6
Introduction to the FYP
Welcome from Faculty Director
Introduction of Faculty Advisors
Student panel on How to Make your FYP a Success
MBA Program Office: The FYP Process
January - February
Project selection and team formation
Students develop project ideas
Students form teams of five
February 19
Project proposal deadline
Project Proposal due at MBA Program Office
February 26
Proposal approval deadline
Project Proposals approved by Faculty Director
Faculty Advisors and Research Librarians assigned to teams
March 22
Spring FYP Kick-off
Plenary session with Faculty Director followed by team meetings with Faculty Advisors
For consulting projects:
The McKinsey Engagement, Paul N. Friga, McGraw-Hill, 2009.
For entrepreneurship projects:
The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki, Penguin Books, 2004.
March 29
Competency Clinic
Survey Design (Kusum Ailawadi)
Week of March 29: Weekly meeting with FA
April 2
Competency Clinic
Interview Techniques (Jessica Gunter)
Week of April 5: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of April 12: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of April 19: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of April 26: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of May 3: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of May 10: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of May 17: Weekly meeting with FA
Week of May 24: Final Presentation
Final presentations May 25-26
Team Debrief Report due last day of exams
