Participant Information

Our Mission

The University of Southern California has a long and successful history of sending its students into the surrounding community to tutor, train, and assist in educational and philanthropic activities.  The Marshall School of Business, too, has witnessed a number of its own students making these contributions.  Usually these have taken place in the context of single classes that have incorporated field work into their curricula or in the form of individual Business students participating in university-sponsored projects within the community.

Now Marshall puts into place an office with responsibility for coordinating community service as it is practiced by Business faculty and students. The goal of Marshall Consulting Program is to provide Marshall students with a central office and liaison point for working with entrepreneurs and non-profit groups in those neighborhoods surrounding campus. This office will establish partnerships with small businesses and not-for-profit executives and introduce them to Business students who wish to work with them. In addition, it will advise students as to which opportunities may exist at any point for them to engage in community service. In short, the office will serve as a good broker for those community neighbors who want to take advantage of the academic training of Marshall students and for those students who seek a service opportunity nearby. A specific way in which Marshall Consulting Program will succeed as such a broker will be in the establishing of student project teams that will work with community partners for whom the students can make genuine contributions. All organizations be they for-profit or not can become better. Our students' efforts always will be directed to this goal. Their task is to take their classroom knowledge and apply it in specific settings in order to create more profitable and effective neighborhood businesses and organizations.

The Marshall Consulting Program will also enlist the support of Marshall faculty, business consultants, and established entrepreneurs who desire to work with students so that both the students and their community partners benefit.  In this fashion, students will assist local groups and firms and simultaneously be advised by professional consultants and experienced business managers.  Among the many advantages stemming from this will be a realization on the students' part that pro bono service on behalf of the community is not reserved for one's college years alone.  Rather, this is a lifelong practice that will be patently demonstrated through the example of their mentors.

Mindful of the USC legacy of worthy service in an urban setting, the Marshall Consulting Program will seek constantly to live up to this high standard.  Its first obligation is to its students, graduate and undergraduate within the Marshall School.  Eventually the opportunity to work with community partners will be expanded to incorporate all USC students and high school students from the surrounding area.  Further, participating students will be reminded that theirs is truly a partnership with neighborhood businesses and non-profits.  By this we mean that students will learn at the same time that they contribute.  Benefits will accrue bilaterally to students and community members as each prospers within the framework of the project teams.