Smith MBAs Consult Projects in the Middle East

Three Smith School of Business MBA students, Patrick Gallice, Carlos Cedeno, and Hirokazu Masuoka, were selected to join a consulting team that traveled to the Middle East over Spring Break, 2015. They studied the feasibility of using greywater for small-scale crop production, assisted in finding solutions to water scarcity in the region, and worked to solve a complex environmental problem that implicates legal, public health, and economic issues.

The University of Maryland asked members of the excursion some questions in an article that ran on the school’s website on April 10. Here’s a selection of those questions:

Why the need to go on-site?

“By visiting various sites and talking to water experts in the region, the team learned that a decentralized approach is more sensible at this time than a centralized approach that would require buy in from Israel and Palestine governments.  From the site visits, we also saw first hand the type of infrastructure currently in place, the topography of the area these communities live in, the size of their agricultural crops where processed greywater could be used on, and movement restrictions in the area, which are important factors to take into consideration when developing a recommendation that will be sustainable and long-lasting.” – Carlos Cedeno, MBA consulting team member

The presence of MBA students as part of this project was crucial

“One of the first items that Clive Lipchin, the Director of the greywater projects, mentioned about the greywater systems was that they were not economically viable. Without a model that was fiscally sound, these solutions would not work long term. The MBA students took those comments to heart and worked tirelessly throughout the trip, in consultation with the other students, to come up with possible solutions.”– Project Advisor, Julie Weisman

After a highly competitive application process, the Office of Global Initiatives, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) and the Center for Social Value Creation hand-picked these MBAs to team up with students from Carey School of Law and the Dental and Nursing School in Baltimore to  improve the business model for the ARAVA Institute for Environmental Studies. You can learn more about for-credit MBA global consulting practicum opportunities posted on the Office for Global Initiatives website.

regions: Washington, DC

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