Designing urban schools

12/10/2010 - A team of first-year Kellogg students took top honors at the Kellogg Education Innovation Case Competition, besting 10 other schools from across the nation.

The team of Rahul Kalita, Jesse Loubier, Srivatsa Marthi and Arpit Midha, all ’12, beat a field of MBA and graduate education schools that included Chicago Booth, UCLA Anderson and the Harvard Graduate School of Education to take home the $2,000 first prize. The two-day competition took place Nov. 12-13 on Kellogg’s downtown Chicago campus, home of the school’s Part-Time Program.

The teams were tasked with designing an urban school district that addressed specific demographic needs and challenges that face the U.S. public school system today. Each team prepared recommendations and presentations to a panel of 10 judges that included education leaders from the government, nonprofit and higher-education sectors.

“This year’s competition focused on one of the biggest challenges facing public education — how an urban school district should be designed to maximize student learning,” said Jaime Griesgraber ’11, co-chair of Kellogg’s Education Industry Club, which hosted the event. “Teams put a lot of time and energy into developing incredibly creative solutions.”

The Kellogg team’s winning plan focused on three key drivers of student success and included recommendations for a shared service center for non-core school activities and a growth percentile-based performance management system.

Marthi said that the event gave his team members the opportunity to learn about pressing challenges and recent innovations in the education sector.

“The competition gave us a safe forum in which to apply and practice what we’ve been learning in class,” he said. “The material on teamwork during the (Leadership in Organizations) course helped during the prep phase. Economic, strategic and marketing concepts informed our actual solutions to the case.”

This is the second year that the Kellogg Social Enterprise program and Education Industry Club has hosted the Education Innovation Case Competition in partnership with The Mind Trust. The event was also sponsored by Education Pioneers, Teach for America and consultant and investor John Mutz.