Beyond the classroom: Haskayne Course-based Student Consulting program helps solve real-world Alberta business challenges

A program out of the Haskayne School of Business offers students a chance to work with companies tackling real-world business challenges. Supported through Haskayne's Career & Student Experience team within Student Services, the Course-based Student Consulting program gives learners valuable hands-on experience in a way classroom learning cannot. 

Through these projects, students build critical-thinking, relationship-building and problem-solving skills that employers value across industries.

"These are also the kinds of human skills and connections that are not easily replaced by AI and help students learn how to work more effectively with AI as part of their professional tool kit," says Dr. Chad Saunders, PhD, associate professor of entrepreneurship with Haskayne.

Solving a rural Alberta problem

Ice Hero, an Alberta-based company, is among the businesses being considered for the next cohort of the program this fall.

When a water line freezes on a rural property, it can bring daily operations to a halt. For farmers and ranchers, it can mean lost time, costly repairs and hours spent searching for a solution.

Living on a ranch west of Grande Prairie, Monica Paslawski and her husband developed their own method for thawing frozen water lines servicing their cattle operation. 

"We were able to thaw it so quickly," she says. "That was the moment when I said to my husband, 'I'm going to market this. People need this thing."

That solution became Ice Hero, a battery-powered portable device designed to thaw frozen water and sewer lines. Paslawski, the startup company’s CEO, now faces the challenge of getting her product out and growing her business.

Paslawski’s experience represents the type of Alberta business challenge Haskayne has long brought into the classroom through course-based consulting and applied learning opportunities. Across Haskayne's undergraduate and graduate programs, student teams can be working on approximately 80 partner projects in a busy term.

Connecting students with industry

Not every business that applies to the program is accepted. As faculty liaison co-ordinator, Terri Moleski helps connect organizations with student-consulting opportunities and guides projects from intake to the classroom.

Before projects enter a course, Moleski works with organizations to translate broad business challenges into questions that are appropriately scoped for student learning, instructor review and course timelines across all Haskayne programs. Determining project fit involves assessing the business question alongside course-learning outcomes, timing and student capacity to ensure value for both the organization and students.

"These projects are not hypothetical classroom exercises where all the information is already packaged neatly," says Moleski. "Students have to ask better questions, work with imperfect information, understand partner needs and develop recommendations that are useful in a real organizational context." 

Alberta innovation in action

For Paslawski, potentially working with students offers an opportunity to bring fresh perspectives to the company's next stage of growth. As the company looks to expand its reach, questions around awareness, customer adoption and market expansion remain. Those are the kinds of real-world business challenges Haskayne students may be asked to help tackle through projects focused on strategy, marketing and business growth. 

"I hope that, if Ice Hero is accepted, that we can all take a lot of satisfaction in building something real that works and is successful," she says.

Businesses don't need to wait to be discovered

Alberta businesses can submit project ideas to Haskayne’s Course-based Student Consulting program for consideration by July 31 for fall courses, or by Nov. 30 for winter courses.