In my live classes, I open my consulting company, “Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc.”, for business and the whole class bands together and we have one big project. In the era of post-COVID and online learning, I was lucky that I was able to teach one of the live classes on the Bergen Community College, Paramus Campus. It was such a pleasure welcoming students back to campus with live lectures and conversing with them.
The Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. corporate logo of the six trees
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In the past, I have created these projects under the Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. banner, the main consulting company, the Orion Malls banner, a Mall design company and the Buscomonzefi.com banner, my Tech Division. Each business does its best to be creative, forward thinking and have a thought producing presentations. I also challenge the students to top on another in their presentations and build on what they have seen others do in the past.
Professor Justin Watrel, CEO & Co-Founder of Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc.
Recently our college was talking about recruitment to the school and the outreach to the high schools. I had seen the recent “Open House’ flyers and emails on campus and sent to my email and I thought the event could have a bit more pizzaz to it. You were trying to recruit students to come to the college and I thought there could be more to it. Working from our Homecoming, Welcome Week and Ambassadors programs that we had done in the past, I thought of “Go Bulldogs Go!-Open House Spring 2024”, a reinvented Open House with dinners, events, concerts and fun activities for the high school students, their parents and current students to enjoy.
“Go Bulldogs Go-Open House 2024 at Bergen Community College Project:
From here I picked my Executive Team and the various Divisional Teams to complete the project. We had the Talent Team, which pays for everything and get the Benefits package together along with the creating the Holiday Party at the end of the project. The Entertainment Team, who would provide all the musicians and musical performances to all the events that we had planned, the Food Service Team, which created all the menus, meals and ideas for serving food and snacks at all the functions. The most important Team was the Marketing Team, who had to promote the whole program to the high schools, Administration, Students and Parents, to all the events and to the Alumni. It was a big job and we only had seven weeks to put the whole thing together.
Being a CEO does have its headaches though. When you have a class of thirty people working on a project, there is a lot going on and there are those who try to ‘piggyback’ off other students and some just disappear. I had both of those. There were a lot of students I had to work with going forward on this project and a lot of leading I had to do. Having three projects going simultaneously was a lot of work for myself and my Executive Teams but I knew all of them could do it.
This was a project that I really wanted to come to life. I think we can do more for our student recruiting and wanted the programs to really shine to show the best of the college and all its attributes. The first day of the project, I broke the class up into Teams and discussed the project.
The Open House that we were creating was a three day event where we engaged both high school students and their parents, the current student body of Bergen Community College and Alumni.
I challenged the students to put a Pep Rally together for the sports teams on campus, a active concert and games, a nice International dinner and a breakfast brunch with music and an active tour of campus while promoting the campus for students to attend. The tours were created to show the best attributes of campus such as the music labs, the AI labs, the Ciccone Theater, the Bergen Room, Gallery Bergen and all our sporting facilities. There is so much at our campus that people do not see on these tours. I also do not like the idea that we burden students with financial aid issues not instead of when they accept coming so I put less emphasis on that. I want them to know all the great cultural things they can enjoy when they do decide to come to Bergen Community College.
As part of the class, I had an in class field trip around campus. I could not believe that most of these students didn’t know that all these things existed on campus. I should have learned from previous classes. This is how this all got inspired. When I asked all the students what their experience was like on campus, most of them just said that they came to class and went home. They never ventured around the campus. A few ate in the cafeteria and one or two had been to the Ciccone Theater and a few more had heard of Gallery Bergen.
The in class trip included Gallery Bergen, with its new contemporary art exhibition, the Bergen Room (in its old location) and the Ciccone Theater, where Professor Baumgartner was doing dress rehearsals but always has time to talk about the Theater Department. That really helps. Then we went outside to the new outdoor courtyard to show the students the logistics of where the concerts and some of the cultural events would take place. Then it back to the classroom to start getting the groups to work on the project. The majority of the students finally got what I was talking about and got to work. Then we started our weekly board meetings.
After seven weeks, the Teams were preparing for our Presentation on December 6th, 2023. I have to say that I was going through a lot in my personal life. Sinterklaas weekend had been the weekend before and all I had done is run around the Hudson River Valley with the Snowflake and Sinterklaas festivities in both Kingston and Rhinebeck, NY. There was a lot of running around the two towns plus running to Ringwood Manor before I left to take pictures of the mansion’s decorations for Christmas. I was not too sure how much time I would have after Christmas (I found that I had none) and was on a picture taking tour.
Then I had my own class presentations in Digital Marketing and Customer Relations class with much stress to get them right (I got ‘A’s on them both) and then had two days of my own students presentations to be followed by another presentation I had to make in Bloomingdales President Marvin Traub with his book “Like No other Store in the World” for my Hotel Sales & Marketing Class (another ‘A’) and then lead to another weekend of picture taking upstate of historical homes and towns. I never sat still and got very little sleep.
In the morning, I had presented my “I’m Glad I’m in Glen Rock, NJ” project with my Marketing class and that went off perfectly so I had high expectations of this class. My President and Senior Vice-President of Operations did not let me down. We had a few hiccups with the presentation but overall it was excellent and I was very impressed by the work and effort the students.
The project results were wonderful and it really showcased the campus with wonderful events to engage the students and their parents over a three day period. I know if the campus really put this whole event on, we would recruit a lot more students with no problems.
What was nice that evening was talking with the parents after the presentation. They were not only impressed by their sons and daughters presentation but impressed by the whole class. That all keep wondering how I get them all to dress up and especially shave. I always reply the same thing, I grade them. I really think though it is the pride that the students have in doing a good job and wanting the look the part of being an executive representing the company. This project prepares them for a future that is unknown to them but now a lot less scary.
They are now prepared for the real world.
The PowerPoint Presentation:
https://www.canva.com/design/DAFy-P-dzDA/2PqVf2Z6oDs1Zp-EC9JjFw/view
The Presentation:
Part of the Presentation by the Talent Team
The Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. Corporate picture:
The Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. Paramus Team-Bulldog Open House 2023.
The Corporate website for Bergecco-Parc Consulting Inc. that they created for this project:
https://bergeccoparcconsul.wixsite.com/my-site
This contains all the commercials, artwork, the PowerPoint and headquarters plans.
The Holiday Party Project:
In lieu of the traditional quiz, I have the students get back in their groups and create ideas for a Corporate Christmas Party for the New Brunswick headquarters. It always amazes me what the Teams can do in an hour. The funny part by this point is that they are so used to working with one another it becomes second nature to them. This quiz is a nice way to end the semester and maybe create some new friendships amongst the students.
Introduction to Business Quiz Four:
The Holiday Party Presentation:
The Introduction to the “Holiday Party’ project.
The President and Senior Vice-President of Operations in their corporate holiday greeting.
The Entertainment Team’s Holiday Presentation.
The Entertainment Team’s Holiday greeting.
The Talent Team’s Holiday Presentation.
The Talent Team’s Holiday Greeting
The Marketing Team’s Holiday Presentation.
The Marketing Team’s Holiday Greeting
The Culinary Team’s Holiday Presentation.
The Culinary Team’s Holiday greeting.
The Holiday ideas were excellent and the Corporate Christmas Party was a huge success!
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