Proceedings of 6th Annual American Business Research Conference
9 - 10 June 2014, Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, New York, USA, ISBN: 978-1-922069-52-8
Project Management: Failure to See Outside the Box in a
Community Service Learning Project
Barbara Brazon*, Loreen M. Powell** and Chaza Adbul***
Preparing students to be more competitive in the in the workforce, for the Business
Administration (BA) program required the introduction of project management. The
BA Project Management course was developed at the Penn State University as a
junior-level course. The course was designed to present Business Administration
students, who have a background in marketing, finance, management, and no prior
knowledge of formal project management. A main component of this project was
the emphasis of soft skills, risk assessment and planning; emphasizing formal
continuous communication with the client.
This paper will discuss the design and methodology of the team based service
learning project, the purpose of emphasis on communication and risk planning with
team and client, and share the project successes and failure of the student’s ability
to plan for catastrophic events.
Field of Research: Project Management
JEL Codes: F34, G21 and G24
*Mrs. Barbara Brazon, Department of Information Science and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, 116 Kostos Building,
Hazleton, PA, USA. Email: bxb30@psu.edu, Phone: 570-450-3089
**Dr. Loreen M. Powell, Department of Business Education & Information and Technology Management, Bloomsburg University
of Pennsylvania, 400 East Second Street, Bloomsburg, PA, 17815 USA. Email: lpowell@bloomu.edu, Phone: 570-389-4257
*** Mrs. Chaza Adbul, Department of Business Education & Information and Technology Management, Bloomsburg University of
Pennsylvania, 400 East Second Street, Bloomsburg, PA, 17815 USA. Email: cadbul@bloomu.edu, Phone: 570-389-3958