Erika Halaby was in her fourth year of business and feeling in a rut. She and her fiancé were often out in the field hosting events for their adventure company, Rooted Rose Recreation and Wellness, and found it difficult to keep up with backend demands, like maintaining their website and social media.
When a mentor at the NH Small Business Development Center (SBDC) told Halaby about a student-run marketing agency at the University of NH, Voice Z Digital, she filled out the application almost immediately. After being approved for the low-cost program, made possible through SBDC grants, Halaby worked with students for two semesters, first to update her website, and then her social media content. Those updates gave Rooted Rose a more professional image that has led to new partnerships.
“There’s more eyes on us, absolutely,” Halaby says.
Halaby is one of many business owners who discovered the power of collaborating with local colleges and universities. These partnerships allow businesses to tap into the resources and knowledge of NH’s educational institutions for help with such services as marketing, systems design, safety, and even manufacturing. Students can hone their skills in a real-world setting, while business owners receive quality professional-level work often at a much lower cost than they would pay elsewhere.
Kathleen Procek-Drazin, project-based learning manager at Southern NH University (SNHU), says working with local colleges allows businesses to tackle projects they wouldn’t consider taking on alone. “What’s your dream project that you don’t have the resources for, personnel for, or expertise for?” she says. “Let us know and we’ll see if we can help and make it happen.”
Manufacturing Assistance
Each month, 80 to 120 companies work with the John Olson Advanced Manufacturing Center at the University of NH in Durham to solve their manufacturing-related problem. The center’s mission “is to [provide companies with] the best cost-effective solution to the issue they’re facing,” says John Roth, director of the center.
Sometimes, that solution is as simple as providing a referral to a subject matter expert at another institution. In other circumstances, it means providing access to the center’s technology and machinery, of which many pieces have multi-million-dollar price tags. For intensive projects, companies sometimes have their entire workforce report to the center’s Durham location for months at a time.
“It really is the catchall,” Roth says. “If they’re trying to get a product out the door or [develop] a new way to make their projects, we’re here to help them. They don’t have to go at it alone.”
After repairing a broken part for a satellite just days before launch, the center has become the go-to resource for aerospace companies with major time-sensitive problems, Roth says. It has worked with a company designing a sensor to monitor forest growth, as well as an inventor with little manufacturing experience who needed to produce 10,000 units a month to fulfill a municipal contract. The center also aggregates other business resources for the manufacturing sector, creating a one-stop hub to support industry, according to Roth.
Safety Support
Manufacturing and construction companies facing real-world challenges can also turn to Keene State College. The college operates WorkWISE NH, a federally funded program through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The program offers free and confidential health and safety consultations to small and medium-sized businesses.
While some businesses reach out of their own accord, or after a nudge from their insurance company, most come to WorkWISE NH after being cited or fined by OSHA, according to Brady Keene, program manager of WorkWISE NH. Businesses are often eligible for reduced fines if they work with the program, he says.
Students in Keene State’s Construction Safety Sciences and Construction Management program, which Brady Keene chairs, are sought after to help companies develop new systems as part of the students’ capstone projects—most which lead to multiple, high paying job offers prior to graduation. These are often larger-scale undertakings, like developing a lockout/tagout system, a critical safety step that ensures machines are properly powered down. “The quality of the students’ work speaks for itself [and] the demand is super high,” Keene says. “If you need a safety professional in the northeast you come to us.”
Marketing on a Dime
While the programs offered by colleges and universities leverage institutional resources to help businesses thrive, they also provide a valuable, hands-on education for students. That’s what drove Tom Gruen, professor of marketing at UNH, and Neil Niman, Associate Dean of the Paul College, in 2019 to start Voice Z Digital, the program that recently assisted Rooted Rose Recreation.
“We thought it would give students really direct experience doing the things they were learning in the classroom,” Gruen says.
The marketing program is housed within the Peter T Paul College of Business and Economics at UNH, also home to the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which provides free business advising. Most of VoiceZ Digital’s clients are small- to medium-sized businesses that are working with SBDC counselors.
“If they had a client that was in need of digital marketing help, but not quite ready for a full-service agency, we [take] them on,” Gruen says.
Students receive credit, rather than compensation, for their work on Voice Z Digital, but companies are still charged a fee, starting at $500, to cover costs, including professional-grade software subscriptions and tools, Gruen says.
Sometimes the SBDC covers the fee, but even for companies that pay out of pocket, the cost is “a fraction of what they would be paying a digital marketing agency,” Gruen says. Whereas Voice Z Digital might charge $1,000 for search-engine optimization (SEO), a professional agency may charge “five times that,” he adds.
There’s a small risk, he adds, to working with students who have less experience than professionals. However, the students’ work is always reviewed by faculty.
The program’s growth speaks for itself: Rooted Rose was its 100th client. “It’s turned out to be very successful in terms of providing the students experience and providing the businesses a lot of really good value,” Gruen says.
A similar program at Plymouth State University, called the Plymouth Creative Marketing and Design Agency, is also in demand. “Businesses will reach out to us because they heard about the good work our students did,” says Dr. Raj Sachdev, associate professor and head of strategic and digital marketing programs at Plymouth State.
Working with Plymouth Creative on a design or marketing project is typically free, Sachdev says, and the program prioritizes businesses that need resources the most, like sole proprietorships and nonprofits.
In addition to running Plymouth Creative, the student-run Marketing Association at Plymouth State operates Statement, an apparel and product brand on campus that produces or sources everything from screen-printed shirts , hoodies, and sweatpants to mugs and pens. “We don’t make a lot of profit on this, but students learn how to create a digital presence, get customers, market to businesses, network, and fulfill those orders by themselves or through suppliers,” Sachdev says. “Statement doesn’t aim to beat the price of larger branding operations but rather provides a competitively priced local option.
Plus, he adds, “Businesses like the fact that students are learning as part of the process. Our main differentiator is the students.”
Benefitting Businesses
Oftentimes, collaborations between business and institutions are relatively informal and tailored to what the business needs, experts say. At SNHU, for example, all schools on campus work with businesses.
“We’re not looking to limit opportunities because we know the benefits of project-based learning are so significant,” Procek-Drazin says. “We’ve done all sorts of projects.”
The process typically starts with businesses reaching out to a school to see what opportunities there are to collaborate, experts say. Faculty and staff can work with owners to create a project that is beneficial to both businesses and students and clarify communication needs and time commitment with businesses.
Students at SNHU have worked with businesses including Live Nation and the Wrestling Federation of America to provide a deliverable that’s beneficial to the businesses. “The goal is for everyone to implement what we give them,” Procek-Drazin says. “So far, we have a pretty good track record.
