Students partner with local businesses to address challenges around sustainability

CENTER VALLEY, Pa. — How can a small business be more sustainable? A group of students and two community partners sought to answer this question during the Common Intellectual Experience (CIE), an initiative that teams Penn State Lehigh Valley students with local small-business owners to help address challenges around sustainability and reducing their carbon footprint.

Now in its third year, CIE brings students from disciplines as diverse as biology, project management and supply chain, marketing, business and IT together with small-business owners in a mutually beneficial partnership. This spring, the CIE program was a project made possible, in part, by a seed grant from the Penn State Office of the Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses (OVPCC) that provided additional funding to hire a student researcher, therefore broadening the project scope.

“We received funds to support our CIE initiative this year, which reduced potential obstacles,” said Subhadra Ganguli, Penn State Lehigh Valley assistant professor of business, design clinic co-facilitator, and principal investigator (PI) of the OVPCC seed grant.

The process starts with the business owner approaching Penn State Lehigh Valley through a campus contact, either Mark Capofari, assistant teaching professor and program coordinator for supply chain management, or Cindy Evans, director of the Lehigh Valley LaunchBox, to provide an overview of the business and its sustainability goals.

“We want a business that’s in operation — a growing business, but not too vast,” Capofari said. “I explain the CIE process and the benefits to a business. I share what is expected of them. If necessary, I’ll connect them with a company that has gone through the program. The Lehigh Valley is large, but it’s really like a small town due to all of the networking opportunities. Business owners help spread the word.”

Next, the community partner commits to attending two design clinics per semester, each lasting one to two hours.

“This is where we ideate on the problem and come up with a solution. This is where the partners come in, start thinking about the problem, and establish the reciprocal dynamic of everyone learning from the process,” said Laura Cruz, research professor at Penn State's Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, member of the CIE steering committee, and design clinic co-facilitator.

The community partner is expected to be part of the conversation but can choose how involved they want to be. When the project is completed, the teams present a Sustainable Action Plan for the community partner followed by a meeting to debrief the plan. Generally, the CIE team can handle two community partners per year.

This year’s community partners were JuxtaHub, an arts and innovation center in Emmaus, and EBC Printing & Signs in Allentown.

The semester-long initiative culminated with a CIE Celebration at the end of April to showcase the work the campus and community partners accomplished together.

“We wanted to invite as many new businesses as we could so they could see the event and how they could work with us,” Ganguli said. “We are trying to work with local businesses, who are always under-resourced and grappling with different challenges. They’re the ones who need this type of approach, and I think our students learn the best from small business owners. It also helps our students become good entrepreneurs.”

Ganguli added the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is posing both opportunities and challenges for small businesses.

“We want our students to understand this complex new world,” she said.

William Serson, assistant teaching professor of biology, said his students had the most engagement with Murtaza Jaffer, owner of EBC Printing & Signs and a PSU-LV alumnus.

“He has transitioned into using products which are alternatives to plastic, and he was looking for insights on ways to promote this change," Serson said. "The marketing students had some interesting suggestions, and the biology students suggested he apply for additional certifications, like LEED, and investigate different sustainable printing materials.”

Serson added that the connections made through CIE are invaluable.

“It’s a big thing for partners because it gives them a connection to our students," Serson said. "We believe we have some of the most talented, capable students out there, and this gives employers access to a unique pool of talent. And for our students, it gives them a chance to network with businesses.”

Serson recruited Furkan Kara, a first-year biology student, for the project. As a transfer student and former business major, Kara was able to apply skill sets from both his business and biology backgrounds to the design clinics.

“I’m really glad Dr. Serson invited me to join. I had a great time working with people and coming up with interdisciplinary approaches to these issues,” Kara said, adding, “I liked how welcoming it was. Really, there’s no other environment I can think of where you can share any opinion or idea, and I liked that.”

Third year student Lovepreet Singh, an accounting major, was student researcher for the project, handling many of the administrative tasks. He said it was interesting to observe different professors from different disciplines interact and collaborate.

“I’m in the accounting department, so it’s interesting to see how those professors think, which is different from the other professors. I also never interacted with other students before this program, so it’s pushed me to be more social,” he said. It’s also gratifying to be part of a program that’s unique to the Penn State network. “[CIE] does something that other universities aren’t doing, as far as I know. I never heard of another university program that has students working with small businesses. I think we’re making a real difference in the business community,” he said.

Jiayi Xu, a first-year business student, said programs like CIE help students connect classroom material to the real world.

“In class we learn a lot of theories and concepts. Real-world problems are usually a lot more complicated. I think students need to have more experiences like this to apply what they’ve learned,” Xu said.

First-year student Charmanie Drigo is interested in starting a business, and he said being part of CIE opened his eyes to how much work is involved in the endeavor.

“I understand that running a business is a lot of work — a lot of work,” he said. “[Through CIE] I got to meet business owners and people just starting up their business, and I know that one day I’ll be able to do the same.”

Serson noted initiatives like CIE are crucial for students to learn to utilize skills like teamwork and critical thinking.

“We explain the problems discussed here are ‘wicked problems’ with no clear answer," Serson said. "When it comes to these questions where there is no clear answer, it requires deep, critical thinking from different perspectives, backgrounds, and disciplines. It also exposes them to students with other ways of thinking and different skills in their toolbox.”

By design, the CIE framework is highly customizable. Cruz, who developed the program with Maung Min, teaching professor of business and director of business programs at PSU-LV, said she sees PSU-LV building a model that can easily be replicated in other areas.

“It’s a relatively low-cost model about building connections that’s tailored to place. It fits the current needs of small businesses in a community,” she said. “Part of what I’m seeing is Penn State Lehigh Valley is building a very robust, very deep model that can be replicated at other Penn State campuses. A lot of people see community engagement as, ’It’s only going to work there.’ I feel we have the bones of a program that’s extremely generalizable — it works for faculty, students, and community partners.”

For more information about CIE, contact Capofari at mmc33@psu.edu.