Two students in the accelerated Master of Public Policy program have won this year’s Net Impact Consulting Challenge with a project examining ways to bring in additional revenue to a local community media access center.
Over winter break, Kyle Lunt and Nick Russo (both MPP ’13) surveyed the Apple software training classes that Amherst Media currently offers to the public. After also researching the offerings of other official Apple training centers in the Northeast, Lunt and Russo recommended that Amherst Media offer additional kinds of training courses and expand its marketing and outreach efforts so that more people know about the available classes.
After hearing presentations on Jan. 19 from a total of five teams of public policy and business students from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the panel of judges named Lunt and Russo the winners. The annual Net Impact competition pairs graduate students with local nonprofits or socially and environmentally conscious for-profit businesses to analyze and provide recommendations for addressing a challenge faced by the organization.
And while Lunt and Russo are pleased that they won, they agree that what they learned during the project was more valuable than being named victors.
“This was a great opportunity to continue to flex my analytical muscles over break, while working with a client I really cared about helping!” said Russo.
Amherst Media opened as a community access cable TV station almost 40 years ago. While it still broadcasts local programming, the organization has become a full-service community media center in recent years, offering media equipment rentals as well workshops and trainings on everything from HD camera operation to mastering Apple’s creative software programs.
But enrollment has been consistently low in the official Apple software certification classes Amherst Media offers. By talking with staff at three successful Apple training centers, Lunt and Russo got a sense of what kinds of classes are popular with students and profitable for the centers. They therefore recommended that Amherst Media expand its course offerings to include certified Apple IT trainings, which consist of application development, server maintenance, operating system management and hardware repair certifications. Among other things, Lunt and Russo also recommended that Amherst Media develop relationships with the Amherst Chamber of Commerce and with journalism, communications and IT departments at UMass and other area colleges in order to advertise the classes to a larger pool of prospective students.
Lunt said he was grateful for the real-world experience that working on this Net Impact project offered him. “The policy analysis we may be doing upon graduation will potentially involve presenting our ideas to clients with tough time constraints, similar to what we were required to do for this project,” he said.
Both Lunt and Russo have a professional and academic background in media and took on the Net Impact project while also working part time at Free Press, a national media advocacy organization located in Florence, Mass. As members of the accelerated MPP program, both students are on track to earn their master’s degrees this spring, just one year after completing their undergraduate studies.