In the Freeman College of Management, these aren’t philosophical questions to ponder in quiet spaces — they’re the driving force shaping the curriculum. Two landmark experiences — Management 101 and the culminating project — occur on opposite ends of the student experience and galvanize the vision that Bucknell hopes its students will adopt: one of tangible impact and purposeful leadership.

Traditionally taken in the first or second year, Management 101 brings students together to create companies from the ground up, and emphasizes how important it is for businesses to recognize their social responsibilities. In partnership with local nonprofit organizations, each student company conceptualizes, pitches and executes a business plan while developing a service project to benefit their partner. They then use their profits to support and undertake the project. “101 has an excellent reputation for teaching students that businesses can and do have a responsibility in a multitude of ways,” says Terrance Burke, management 101 coordinator.

Not only do the nonprofits benefit from the students’ work, but the students also gain a valuable understanding of humanitarian issues. “It brings together theory and practice through the creation of real companies that create social impact,” says Robyn Eversole, the Howard I. Scott Professor of Practice in Social Entrepreneurship. “We teach them how to identify an issue and do something about it.”

The course precedes the formation of the Freeman College by several decades, and alumni look back at Management 101 as a pivotal benchmark in their educational experience. “Grads from the early years still talk about 101 as being transformational and helping them determine what they wanted to study,” says Professor Melissa Intindola, management & organizations.

“I still use it today,” says Laura Reed ’01, a senior manager at Comcast Business. “It was important to how I perceive my responsibilities as a leader — how to approach the community aspect and how to build a strong team. Management 101 was probably the most actionable class I had because it applied to the real world.”

Now, Reed is playing an integral role on the other side of the management experience — she’s sponsoring a culminating management project. “The students I’m working with aren’t evaluating a theoretical data set somewhere in the cloud,” Reed says. “They’re working with real-world data and making a real impact.”

Culminating projects offer another opportunity for collaboration through purpose-driven, experiential learning. Partnering, again, with real-world companies and organizations — like Comcast Business with Reed — students offer consulting and technical services as they execute high-level projects.

Across the college, culminating projects are direct reflections of the 101 framework — relationship-driven, actionable and impactful. But now, students approach their work with the expertise they’ve gained from their unique path through the Freeman College’s curriculum. For example, students in MORS 400 — the culminating experience for management & organizations majors — aid communities in the lower anthracite coal region through a series of revitalization projects. By integrating community engagement into coursework, students learn to be concerned with more than profits or performance metrics, and to realign their focus toward prosperity, people and place.

“We’re creating good humans who will end up in leadership positions where they can feel empowered to make a difference,” Intindola says. “We want them to be the ones who recognize problems and say, ‘How can I do something about this?’ ”

It happens through exceptional experiences — in the classroom and outside of it — that shape unique mindsets.

Leaders who graduate from the Freeman College of Management credit their success to Bucknell, recognizing the impact not only of their management coursework, but also of the interdisciplinary experiences that informed their view of the world.