Early Saturday morning, April 22, RCs from Sections A and B visited the Saturday Engineering Enrichment and Discovery (SEED) Academy at MIT. Jermaine Warren (NB), Bianca Tabourn (NB), Scott Jacobs (NB), Tom Replogle (NB), Jaison Battle (NA) and Jonathan Wilkins (NA) led 35 high school students in an interactive learning session.
Students were given a summary of the Sony EyeToy case, which is taught in the first year marketing curriculum, and charged with the task of creating a marketing strategy for a new game. The SEED students played the Sony EyeToy before breaking into teams and strategizing their plans. Each of the seven teams pitched their ideas on how to best market the new game focusing on price, promotion, placement and product. Students voted for the winning team, of which each member will receive a prize at the academy’s end of the year closing reception.
The Saturday Engineering Enrichment and Discovery (SEED) Academy at MIT is an academic enrichment and career exploration program for public high school students from Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The academy’s primary mission is to increase the number of traditionally underserved local students in the pipeline to the technical workforce. SEED provides participants with an interesting, hands-on curriculum that strengthens their foundational math, science and communication skills; a challenging learning environment with high expectations; and access to positive role models.
HBSers wanted to assist SEED with their goal of strengthening students’ communication skills and exposing students to an interactive learning environment. Many of the students were very impressed with the case method of learning and found the problem solving approach to be in sync with the problem solving skills required of them as future engineers. HBSers were amazed by the phenomenal job the high school students did as well as their insightful takeaways on working in teams and their success in communicating their strategy.
