Campus Currents

SIFE Team Helps Change the World

For some students free enterprise is a way of life. Those students belong to SIFE, or, Students in Free Enterprise. The group’s goal is to encourage growth in Walla Walla Valley businesses and educate the community on better business practices.

SIFE also allows students to turn book learning into practical experience. Through projects and competitions, students work with business professionals and make valuable contacts and find mentors.

There are 23 core members in WWC’s SIFE team this year, but more than 100 others have been involved, including students majoring in graphic design, theology, business, communications, computer science, education, music, and art.
This April, for the second straight year, the WWC team won the SIFE Regional Competition in Seattle, competing against three other teams. Eleven team members then competed in the National Competition in Kansas City, Kan., but failed to make it past the first round.

“WWC won regionals this year in part because of the scope of the team’s projects,” says Lynn Boyd, SIFE director and assistant professor of marketing.
Some of those projects included redesigning websites for the Blue Mountain Chapter of the American Red Cross and for a local information technology company. Students also helped a widow prepare the family business for sale, streamlined accounting systems for two other businesses, and developed a marketing plan for an online global marketing project.

Jimmy Schultz, a senior accounting major, has been involved with SIFE for three years but found his final project to be a real challenge.

The project involved a local medical office that was having problems with its accounting system. The business was using a computer software program but the owner and employees didn’t know how to operate it. In addition, the owner was paying thousands of dollars a month to an accountant, but the business’s real bottom line was still not clear.

Schultz had just taken a class on accounting information systems when he became involved with the project. He was able to simplify the accounting system and train the owner and employees on the new system. The owner saved thousands of dollars and could then focus on the most important part of the business—the patients.

For Schultz, all the things he’d been hearing in class finally came together. He also learned things he’d never heard before. “There are personality problems and other human aspects you don’t learn in class. But the biggest thing I learned was how to cater the information to the client’s needs.”

Schultz and other SIFE members say they feel good knowing that they’re doing something in the “real world” and making a difference in real lives. It helps prepare them for life after graduation and gives them confidence in their skills and abilities.  W

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