“It’s moving to me that our project will in some small way impact the future of veteran care. Isn’t that what we all want in life, to leave our corner of the world a little better than we found it?”

When Dean Prabhudev Konana initiated the Office of Experiential Learning (OEL) at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, he described its mission as “to expand and deepen existing alumni and corporate relationships to increase career success odds for students opportunities for our students to get the type of real-world, practical learning that will make them the most sought after by employers when they graduate.”

The Smith School has always known how important experiential learning is for students. These hands-on, immersive experiences and opportunities to solve real problems for real companies help them develop critical thinking skills, greater resilience, and an ability to lead the organizations of the future. Smith has offered this type of learning—both in the classroom and beyond—for years.

Students majoring in Information Systems got the opportunity to use what they’d learned throughout the undergraduate program in a culminating experiential learning senior capstone course where they built web solutions for small local businesses and worked with professionals and alumni from Deloitte and KPMG.

More Smith alumni are giving back to help current students get jobs, thanks to new efforts from the Office of Career Services and the newly launched Office of Experiential Learning.