By Julia Mericle
Assistant News Editor
On November 22, ENACTUS partnered with the Dream It! Do It! Organization to host the Dream It! Do It! 500 in the Richter Center. The event was open to Western New York high school students.
ENACTUS is an organization on campus promoting partnership between leaders in business and students.
The event consisted of a competition in which students built model cars powered by rubber bands and then prepared marketing pitches, which they presented to a panel of judges as if they were selling the car. Participants were given 2.5 hours to construct their cars and 20 minutes to create the two to three minute marketing pitch.
Dr. Todd Palmer, ENACTUS advisor, said the Dream It! Do It! 500 provided an opportunity for Bonaventure students and local manufacturers to create a partnership with local high school students.
The projects were judged by a group of university professors and students that scored the participants based on creativity, professionalism, and team involvement.
According to Michael Pingelski, junior accounting major, who has developed the event for three years, it was created due to a dire need for students to develop STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills at an early age.
“With St. Bonaventure being located in the rust belt, these skills are demanded in order for this area to grow economically,” Pingelski said.
According to Pingelski, students from the local area that attend college tend to leave the area after graduation. Those that do not attend college lack the skills required to work in modern manufacturing.
“By creating this even we are trying to encourage our students to become interested in these manufacturing jobs and if not interested, at least aware of the importance for skills like these,” Pingelski said.
Pingselski also noted that an industrial management major is in the works at St. Bonaventure.
“I think that St. Bonaventure should really be taking a closer look in their own backyard, because we just had 112 students that spent a Saturday with us doing very similar things to what would go on in an industrial management major,” Pingelski said.
Aspects such as planning, developing and budgeting were all employed in the Dream It! Do It! 500.
According to Pingelski, the event was a success and the engineers and professors involved found the participant’s projects and presentations to be creative and impressive.
The Dream It! Do It! Organization has plans to expand the project to other parts of the country, including the Buffalo and Rochester areas.
Pingelski said that more volunteers are needed to help with the project in the future.
“We would need to increase our volunteers in order to increase our participants, both of which are very attainable,” Pingelski said.
Regarding the future of the event, Pingelski said ENACTUS is trying to increase the technicality of the model car construction, but he was still very pleased with the results.
“I don’t think there would be anything that we could have changed to make it a better project,” Pingelski said.
