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New England Institute of Technology (NEIT) is now offering students in Rhode Island public high schools two dual enrollment options to earn credit toward a degree at its technical career university. NEIT was among the first colleges and universities to participate in the state’s Advanced Coursework Network, launched in 2016. If you’re enrolled in a school participating in the Advanced Coursework Network, you are able to take advanced-level, credit-bearing courses at NEIT at no cost to yourself or your family.

The credits earned will then be applied to your college degree at NEIT. You can REGISTER HERE for Advanced Coursework Network to get a jumpstart on your career at New England Tech.

A second way you can earn credits toward a NEIT degree is if you are a Providence Public School junior.  New England Tech is offering conditional early acceptance, allowing you to earn credits toward your NEIT degree while still in high school. The program is open to all juniors enrolled in Providence public schools who have at least a B average at the end of their junior year and, through school attendance and behavior, have proven the maturity necessary for college success. You must also meet NEIT’s admission procedures for the programs to which you are applying. If you do, NEIT will waive all application fees. In this program, you can take up to two courses per quarter, with a maximum of four courses per calendar year. These courses are free and allow you to earn credits for high school and college simultaneously.

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The Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless (RICH) recently hosted their annual luncheon. According to their online overview, RICH “strives to highlight the issue of homelessness, increase public awareness, and heighten public involvement in order to solve the problem of homelessness in Rhode Island.”

This year’s 2017 luncheon was special because the campaign utilized was created by Johnson & Wales students. Every year RICH comes to one of JWU’s Integrated Marketing Communication classes in hopes that the students will come up with a unique marketing idea. The classes called upon this time were taught by Professors Oscar Chilabato and Christine Ure. The students had an opportunity to pitch RICH a bunch of marketing ideas.

Two of the students who were instrumental in creating the campaign were Jayson Braynen and Patrick Lindner. Lindner is close to the cause because he interned with RICH over this past summer. The campaign designed was called #BRINGUSHOME. The idea was to remind people that there is work left to be done, and reflect on the hard-work that has already been put in. The students used a video about a man named Luis Fred. His story is about being rehabilitated after being homeless. He exemplifies a success story as he now benefits from a paying job, and is a speaker trying to change the beliefs about homelessness.

Braynen commented on the initiative stating, “”The work non-profit organizations do in this state is no less difficult or meaningful than work that is done by commercial organizations. The “Bring Us Home” campaign for the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless and the people it has impacted is proof of that. The experience was unforgettable – I’m happy to have played a small part in a great cause that was worth celebrating earlier this month.”

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First graders at Providence’s Vartan Gregorian Elementary School were treated to a very special delivery recently: Students from JWU’s School of Engineering & Design brought a set of fully functional chipboard playhouses for them to assemble and play with.

The collaboration was a team effort between Assistant Professor Jonathan Harris’ freshman CAD II and Assistant Professor Karyn Jimenez-Elliot’s sophomore Print Design classes.

CAD students were tasked with the design and construction of the chipboard playhouses, while the designers were responsible for the branding, package design, instructional brochures and physical packaging to house the oversize toys. (They also completed branded magazine ads.)

The whole process of conceptualizing, designing and fabricating took roughly a month. Given the amount of labor involved — from creating the CAD templates to creating a cohesive visual identity — teamwork was essential.

Harris and Jimenez-Elliot kicked off the project by giving their students a background in architectural styles prevalent in greater Providence, where Vartan Gregorian Elementary is located.

Students then divided into teams split evenly between engineers and designers. The groups worked together to choose an overall style and to pin down the core components of the design.

Designing such a large, labor-intensive and functional physical prototype was not without its challenges. Designer Frieda Rapp, who worked with DJ Yuanouich, Dominique Scott, Nasser Saleh and James Bruno on the “Kidzo” playhouse, found that the sheer size caused logistical issues: “The package was too large to laser-cut,” she noted. “When the time came, I had no choice but to hand-cut everything.”

Timothy Jones, who worked with Cory Fauteux, Cassandra Alaniz, Sabrina Alpino, and Alex Machinski on the “Hatchlings” playhouse, learned a lot about collaborating with others. After working through some inevitable communication issues, he noted that he’d “grown as a designer and as a team member.”

Knowing that the playhouses were going to be road-tested by first graders put a good kind of pressure on the final product, noted CAD designer Nasser Alharshan: “The satisfaction of being able to see the final product was amazing.”

Overall, students found the project tough but rewarding. “To me, it was more than just another portfolio piece,” noted Frieda. “The biggest [reward] … was being able to see photos of the kids playing with our house and enjoying every second of it.”

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Once each academic semester, Dr. Sonia Gantman, assistant professor of accountancy, provides her accountancy students a valuable, real-world business experience through a hands-on term project. In her course, Accounting Information Systems, a required class for accountancy majors, students work in small teams with organizations on and off campus to study and analyze their business processes and help them to improve their methods.

“The goal of the project is to give the students an opportunity to work with real-world organizations and compare what they learned in class with what happens outside of class,” said Gantman, who said 30 to 40 students enroll in her class each semester.

She continued, “Finding a client organization on their own, interviewing people about their jobs, dealing with logistics contingencies, and handling interdependencies within the team are all invaluable experiences gained from the project that help students get a better grasp of the profession and prepare them to the job market.”

During the Fall 2016 semester, each student group studied the buying and other processes within one of four businesses: Peter Pan Bus Lines, the New England Patriots’ ProShop, PC’s Phillips Memorial Library, and the College’s Raymond Dining Hall. In studying the processes, the students aimed to identify problems with their client’s current methods and help them to become more efficient in their buying.

Therese Nessralla ’18 (Raynham, Mass.) explained that while working on the Raymond Dining Hall project, her group learned how the cafeteria operates its purchasing and inventory management by interviewing the unit controller, John LaBreche of Sodexho, the College’s food services provider.

In order to create a flow chart of purchasing activity, her group asked detailed questions concerning the recording process, the cafeterias vendors, and any delays that might impede purchasing.

Nessralla explained how learning about business methods, such as purchasing, in the context of a real business was not what she expected in her class.

“It is surprising to see why a process is done a certain way, whether it is for cost-efficiency, timeliness, and/or accuracy,” said Nessralla. “I also find it interesting to see how many risks we face in order to do business. The most challenging part is being extremely thorough and trying to detect risks that we normally do not think about.”

While working with the New England Patriots’ ProShop, Kathleen Cronin ’18 (York, Maine) explained that her team worked with a different type of inventory process called “complimentary item process.” Through this process, team members analyzed how the ProShop updated its inventory when items were given to visitors of the stadium as complimentary gifts.

From left, the team of Kellie Roach ’17, Lauryn Picknelly ’18, Brenna Williams ’18, and Jake Beaton ’18 studied processes at the Peter Pan bus company as part of the Accountancy Information Systems course.

Cronin discussed how working with the ProShop built off her classroom lessons and put them into the context of the business world.

“Throughout the interview, my group and I could envision ourselves taking on the inventory process and creating a detailed flowchart that would represent it,” said Cronin. “In the classroom we were able to see how the flowcharts and context diagrams worked, but by working with a business we were challenged to take what we knew and create our own narrative, context diagram, and flowchart.”

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