Thrust Consulting, an undergraduate team of engineering and business students, won the Most Outstanding Capstone award at the Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) Conference on May 3, 2018, at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The team helped its client, GE subsidiary Middle River Aircraft Systems, boost production efficiency at its facilities in Middle River, Md.

Eleven teams. Consulting for eleven companies. Over the course of one roller coaster of a semester. No frills, no sugar coating, and no room for failure.

Smith student Philip Peker ’18 writes about the QUEST Conference, May 5, 2016, at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Some of the University of Maryland’s top undergraduates impressed a crowd of hundreds of business professionals, faculty, alumni, peers, and family members at the annual QUEST Conference on Dec. 9, 2015, at the Riggs Alumni Center. The 10 teams of students – all seniors in the Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) honors program – delivered polished presentations of the results of their capstone consulting projects.

For the first time, junior students in the Quality Enhancement Systems and Teams (QUEST) honors program had the chance to show off their quality management, innovation and teamwork skills to a crowd of over 300 people at the spring QUEST conference hosted at the Riggs Alumni Center on Wednesday, May 6, 2015.

Thirteen teams of undergraduate QUEST honors students presented the results of their capstone projects to an audience of hundreds at the annual QUEST Conference on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, at the Riggs Alumni Center. Dressed in business professional attire, and with their presentations memorized, the students were highly polished. Each session was timed and carefully orchestrated to deliver maximum impact – it was clear they had been preparing for this moment for some time.