FAYETTEVILLE : Youths find seminar on business delicious
Posted on Sunday, November 16, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — Schoolchildren got a candy-coated lesson in economics, marketing, ethics and other business basics Saturday from college students before designing a chocolate iPod and other prototypes.
“Right now, we’re working on the ‘iChoc’,” said 10-year-old Belinda Chun of Springdale as her four-member team fashioned their edible MP 3 player from cookie dough, chocolate chips, frosting and sprinkles.
“We could’ve made a chocolate radio,” the bespectacled, smiling J. B. Hunt Elementary fifth-grader said of her team, which included brother Christopher Chun (who turns 12 later this week ) of Hellstern Middle School.
The iChoc was more cutting edge, and its simple lines easier to fashion from the ingredients in the business laboratory’s candy buffet.
Belinda and Christopher were among 22 third- through sixthgraders at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville on Saturday who participated in “Willy Walton’s Chocolate Factory.”
Since 2001, UA students in the campus’s Students in Free Enterprise group have staged the one-day program designed to teach elementary and middle school children basic business principles, said Susan Bristow, a doctoral student and instructor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business’ information systems department.
This year was the first time in the Willy Walton program’s history the students have incorporated an actual, physical prototype made with candy into its product development competition.
“That was Katie’s brainchild,” Bristow said of Katie Sanders, a senior marketing major from North Little Rock who was among 15 SIFE students on hand for Saturday’s program.
Besides the Walton College business majors, the SIFE group includes UA students studying in other colleges and fields, including engineering, apparel studies, advertising and public relations, Bristow said.
The candy making was added as a second step in the product competition, which still includes conceiving, designing and drawing the product for a PowerPoint presentation that incorporates a slogan and marketing campaign. The pupils had two hours Saturday afternoon to take their concept from idea to finished presentation.
Huddled in one corner, one team tried out a slogan as they rolled out a doughy disc: “Want chocolate ? Want pizza ? Take both !” (The product: chocolate pizza ).
The other prototypes were “cocoa-sicles,” Christmas tree bars and candy balls.
Over the years, UA students have developed a Willy Walton curriculum that has been copyrighted, Bristow said. Area schools are free to use it so long as they credit the UA SIFE program, or the UA students will come out to the schools and teach the curriculum.
Roughly 38, 000 students in 47 countries participate in SIFE, including more than 15, 000 students in the United States who comprise 550 teams at 1, 500 universities, Bristow said.
In 2003, UA’s Willy Walton program won first place at the Free Enterprise Special Competition at SIFE’s national exhibition, she said.
“We have to have measurable results,” Sanders said. So, the pupils are given a 10-question test before and after the program to see how they improved. Later, they’ll be encouraged to take an online quiz through the lure of a raffle to win an iPod Shuffle.
The UA program led in 2004 to a spinoff, Bongo and Jack’s Ice Cream Factory, for sixth- through eighth-graders. The factory, which focuses on economics, will be held next Saturday. Sixth-grade Willy Walton participants may attend next week’s session.
Before Saturday’s business proteges could craft their products, they spent the morning rotating through classes covering economics, ethics, budgeting, advertising, marketing and logistics.
Christopher said he liked the budgeting lessons, while another boy from Hellstern, sixth-grader Noah Williams, liked the presentation on how businesses make chocolate.
Adam Hammond, a junior UA international economics major, taught his charges about supply and demand using familiar candies like Jolly Ranchers.
“If the price of peanut butter goes down, the demand goes where ?” Hammond asked the pupils during his morning class.
“Up,” some of the eight pupils in his economics class responded.
“And so the demand for jelly would also go up,” Hammond said, explaining another principle, that of “complementary” ingredients.
Nathan Pugh, a sophomore marketing major, praised Mary Grace Heil, 9, of Fayetteville for her astute answer to his opening question: What is ethics ?
“Right, ethics is a lot like integrity. It’s doing what’s right when nobody’s watching,” Pugh said. “So, Mary Grace hit it right on the head.”
Mary Grace, a fourth-grader at Vandergriff Elementary, said ethics ended up as her favorite class.
“It’s like, about, being fair and stuff, and I like things fair,” she said.
But Mary Grace had similar reasons for liking the budgeting class: “It’s about budgeting and stuff — and I like money.”
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