Experiential Learning At WashU Olin: An Inside Look

For many MBA programs, experiential learning is a selling point. In St. Louis, Missouri at Washington University’s Olin Business School, experiential learning is a defining part of their student experience. Rather than experiencing simulated business cases or hypothetical consulting exercises, students actually work through real challenges for global companies.

Their projects are essentially guided consulting projects – real, three months long, with intensive coaching. Though guided, the stakes are still high. Their executive partners are hopeful and eagerly waiting to hear potential solutions.

A SEMESTER WITH BUNGE

One of Olin’s most recent collaborations was with global agribusiness leader, Bunge. Students applied their skills and had the chance to develop confidence tackling some of Bunge’s real and ambiguous problems.

Walking us through what this experience looks like is Panos Kouvelis, director of the Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation and Emerson Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain, Operations, and Technology.

“We spend the early sessions of the project interacting with the customer organization asking a lot of questions to fully understand the project, the main challenges, and their objectives out of it,” Kouvelis says. “I guide the students through these client interaction sessions.”

Kouvelis coaches students through the tangled realities of consulting, helping them connect classroom concepts with real business challenges while learning that progress often comes through experimentation, iteration, and even failure.

With Bunge, the company needed a way to manage one of its largest global customer accounts, balancing commodity prices, production planning, foreign exchange risk, and distribution across dozens of international markets.

“Failure of the plan to deliver effectively required quantities of oils to the customer restaurants and at effective costs could result in Bunge’s potentially loss of a lucrative multi-million-dollar contract,” Kouvelis explains. “It was a high stake, real project that the company was lacking sophisticated decision support technology to handle at that time.”

FACING COMPLEXITY HEAD-ON

Students on the Bunge project encountered conflicting priorities, incomplete information, and enormous data sets, all under the pressure of delivering a solution within a semester.

One of the students on the team was Stacy Alcantara-Garcia, MBA ’25. When her team encountered their first challenge, Alcantara-Garcia says, “There was a moment of silence, because it didn’t sink in immediately, and we were all looking at each other. Then, Professor Kouvelis started helping us make sense of it.”

From there on, they attended meetings weekly with Bunge executives, faculty mentors, and technical advisors who gradually transformed an overwhelming challenge into a workable plan.

The MBAs worked alongside other master’s students specializing in supply chain analytics, engineering students, statisticians, and computer scientists.

Watching the transformation in the students is one of the most rewarding parts of the process for Kouvelis. At the beginning, it seems like an insurmountable challenge, he says, but, “When you cut it into smaller pieces and attack them one at a time in an organized way, the problems appear challenging but doable,” he says.

“By the end, they are confident about their abilities and tools, more mature in their thinking, appreciate the power of effective teamwork, and are ready to embark on the challenges of their professional career,” he continues.

CONNECTING THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

While faculty provide the coaching, bringing these opportunities to students requires an extensive network of corporate partnerships. The Boeing Center’s Associate Director, Andy Sample, plays a critical role in creating the partnerships.

“Our center sources the projects for the experiential learning aspect of the degree,” Sample says. “We’ve been doing that for well over 20 years through our relationships with local businesses.”

Through their corporate membership model, companies partner with the Boeing Center and they get what Sample describes as a “mini consulting project” completed by graduate students under faculty supervision.

The partnerships truly benefit all parties. Companies gain fresh perspectives on difficult business problems while students get the chance to build up their resumes with meaningful client work before they graduate.

“It’s a really great program,” he says. “It helps the clients, it helps the students, and it supports the center.”

A PATHWAY TO PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

Many organizations and companies find their future employees through these projects. That was the case for Alzana Jakupovic, Class of 2022, first worked with Boeing as part of a Boeing Center student consulting team five years back.

“This is a way for companies to preview top-tier talent that is going to be on the job market within months. That’s the case with Alzana. She’s a great example of a company doing a project with us, previewing the talent, and then transitioning that into a hire.”

During the Bunge project, students ultimately developed a sophisticated decision-support system. Behind the scenes, the technology relied on advanced forecasting, optimization, and simulation models.

She says that part of the challenge was that the executives wanted something much simpler to use. The team of students after her developed what they called a “magic button,” she says. This enabled the executives to see the solutions in a simplified manner through an intuitive graphic format or well-organized table. The resulting tool impressed Bunge executives enough that the company implemented it for ongoing use.

CONFIDENCE BUILT THROUGH COLLABORATION

Business success rarely depends on technical knowledge alone. Student Alcantara-Garcia says leading the interdisciplinary team strengthened her confidence working across different areas of expertise.

“Just putting those resources and people together, getting through that, really helped me,” she said.

That combination of leadership, communication, and analytical thinking are what fresh grads need for success in the workforce, whether they’re managing projects, leading teams, or advising executives on complex decisions.

At WashU, students certainly graduate with stronger technical skills. They also have the chance to work through uncertainty and build up their confidence in a safe and supportive environment.

“Students can listen to lectures in class and look at a PowerPoint until they’re blue in the face,” says Sample. “But it’s not until they can go out and talk to executives in a real company with real problems and apply those classroom teachings that they’re going to learn incredibly valuable lessons.”

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