U of A students train their energy on making Edmonton more affordable

No one must convince University of Alberta students that affordability is a struggle in Edmonton. They can see it in their own budgets for housing, food and other essentials.

But all first-year students at the U of A’s Alberta School of Business now have an opportunity to brainstorm tangible solutions to the problem and to create change. The school’s third annual Impact Series — which kicked off on October 7 and will continue throughout their four-year undergraduate degree — asks students to create recommendations and work on projects that address affordability for young Edmontonians.

“We wanted our students to have an impact on the world, to make a difference right during their degrees, while realizing that impact needs to start from within — you need skills, tools and knowledge,” says Leo Wong, an associate dean at the Alberta School of Business and co-creator of the program.

Most importantly, “I wanted students to appreciate that complex challenges can’t be addressed in one semester. You need the opportunity to revisit them as you gain more skills and knowledge. That’s what’s unique about having this four-year runway.”

Four years of focus

The latest Impact Series launched when 800 first-year business students and a group of 100 alumni, city representatives and local organizations gathered in the Butterdome for an afternoon of networking.

After hearing brief remarks about factors that affect affordability from Vikas Mehrotra, dean of the Alberta School of Business, and Kim Petrin, deputy city manager of the City of Edmonton, students broke into teams to begin devising recommendations on how to make Edmonton an attractive place for young people to live, learn, work and play.

By the end of this semester, student teams will submit a concise video about their recommended solution and the research that supports it. Judges will choose the top three ideas and those will be presented live to their fellow students, wrapping up the first-year course in the Impact Series.

In second year, working within the same theme, students can choose a different topic (and group of collaborators) but must develop a proposal for funding. In third year, they will be asked to view affordability for young people through a global lens. For their fourth-year capstone project, they’ll partner with a community organization to help implement a project.

The Impact Series began in the fall of 2022 on a suggestion by Eric Axford, a former chief sustainability officer for Suncor Energy. He challenged Wong to develop a program that helped all business students become increasingly adaptable, innovative, entrepreneurial thinkers during their four years of study. Wong responded with the creation of the four Impact Series courses.

Impact on students

Although the courses for the final two years of study are still being developed, the series has already made noticeable impact on students, the school and the Edmonton community.

Most students enter the Alberta School of Business as recent high school graduates aged 18 or 19 and can feel overwhelmed by a big project like solving affordability, says Wong.

“But then they realize, ‘Oh, it’s about teamwork. Oh, it’s about learning a method (the four-step case method taught in the first-year course). Oh, then it’s about peeling away the layers of the onion and focusing on this issue or on these ideas.’ ”

Wong has also seen students who enter business school singularly focused on wanting a job, future stability and making money, broaden their perspective to include making a difference in the world because of the Impact Series courses. “That’s the thing that’s really exciting in terms of the impact on students.”

For the business school, the series provides an opportunity to expand its traditional role of teaching the processes of accounting or finance, and to consider more deeply its impact on society as it trains strong leaders.

Each year, the Impact Series is named for a different sponsoring donor. Following the Axford Impact Series on downtown vibrancy, in 2022 the accounting firm MNP sponsored it with a focus on the local economy. This year, the Ferguson family (including Brad Ferguson of the management consulting firm Optimus SBR and John Ferguson, a retired businessperson and former chancellor of the U of A) is the series sponsor.

“The idea that this impacts all of ours students is very compelling (to sponsors),” says Wong.

Wong says the series is also generating interest in departments throughout the City of Edmonton and at entities like the Downtown Business Association as students contact them to research their problems and solutions. Representatives have shared their expertise during class appearances and as judges for recommendation submissions. They’ve even offered several students internships or summer jobs because of their work on the series.

“For 18-year-old students, that’s pretty impressive that they’ve been able to leverage the course into employment after their first year,” says Wong.

Besides learning to collaborate on complex problems and thinking about how to create impact in the community, Impact Series students learn a valuable lesson in their first year of school — a.k.a. the beginning of their career as leaders.

“The realization that students respond to really well is that it’s not about (them) solving a problem,” says Wong. “It’s more about learning about it, learning a process to get to the solution, and (seeing) that that’s a long-term thing they need to work throughout their life.”