Upcoming Event
Sept. 1, 2010 – The EcoCAR Project Info Session
Dear Laurier MBA students,
I write this email to you as an invitation to learn about a unique leadership opportunity … the type of opportunity that enhances your MBA experience and offers you chances to travel (for free), to get paid (well), to learn about business sustainability issues, to network with potential employers and to have a great time doing it.
My name is Eric Mallia and I graduated from the Laurier BBA program more than five years ago. These days I am pursuing a Master’s in Environmental Studies at University of Waterloo. I am also one of the business team leaders for the EcoCAR project in Waterloo.
Last year, the EcoCAR project hired an MBA student from Laurier (Anna Sinicki) to help manage our business needs and objectives. We are excited to continue to offer this opportunity to another MBA student this year and I will be stopping by your class (SBE 2250) on Wednesday to share more information. Students that are in the SBE 2260 class are invited to join this short session at the start of the lunch hour.
Information Session Details:
Date: Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Time: 12:00pm – 12:20pm
Room: SBE 2250
What is the EcoCAR Project?
It is a North American Eco-Engineering competition amongst 16 universities and colleges from Canada and the United States. Each school that qualified for this competition has been challenged to re-engineer a stock 2009 crossover vehicle, donated from General Motors, into a vehicle with reduced emissions while maintaining (or improving) the vehicle’s safety, utility and performance. In Waterloo, we are transforming our GM vehicle into a hydrogen fuel-cell plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Don’t understand what that means? … Don’t worry. Last year’s MBA student wasn’t familiar with this stuff at first, but she did a great job with our fundraising and marketing efforts that eventually ended up receiving several marketing job offers in this sector.
Who are we and what do we do?
The University of Waterloo (UW) and Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) have partnered together to compete in this competition. The team is currently in the third year of the competition. While engineers from UW work on the vehicle development, business students from WLU and environmental studies students from UW are working together to find corporate sponsors, coordinate public relations efforts and execute community events.
What is the role of the business leaders (the MBA student)?
On the business side of the team, we have three main activities:
1) Fundraising;
2) Public relations and community outreach; and
3) Online marketing (website and social media).
The business leaders (one MBA student and me) coordinate a team of approximately 10 undergrads who earn course credit for completing various business and outreach activities. The successful MBA candidate receives a substantial fellowship for his/her work on this project. To apply, you just need to send me a résumé and a simple letter of motivation by Monday, September 6th, 2010 to: emallia@uwaterloo.ca. More details will be provided at the info session on Wednesday.
Want to learn more?
If you have read up to here, hopefully that means you are interested so far. I will be stopping by your class on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 to give a 10 minute presentation about this opportunity (plus 10 minutes for Q&A).
If you can stick around for 10 to 20 minutes at the beginning of your lunch break, I would be happy to provide all the details. If you plan to attend my presentation, could you please email me at: emallia@uwaterloo.ca. This is so that I can gauge numbers for presentation materials.
Feel free to check out our websites in the meantime:
Team’s website: www.uwaft.com
Competition’s website: www.ecocarchallenge.org
Hope to see you at lunch on Wednesday!
Cheers and thanks,
Eric Mallia
Outreach Coordinator
The EcoCAR Challenge
Email: emallia@uwaterloo.ca
Web: www.uwaft.com