M Focus on: Waste & Recycling
ASU business school helps create real-world solutions to business problems By NICHOLETTE CARLSON | The Municipal
Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business has teamed up with a few different businesses and organizations over the years to help create real-world solutions for various problems. Kevin Dooley, distinguished professor with Mesa project ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business, created “The city came to us to do a business plan,” an interdisciplinary lab course for full-time Dooley stated of the class’s first project Master of Business Administration students. assisting Mesa, Ariz., with food waste. For For each project, the class has a sponsor or the project, students teamed up with ASU’s client, depending on the outcome of their School of Sustainability. work. The class will also team up with another The city’s idea was to collect food waste ASU school as a partner on the design. within Mesa and put it into the wastewater 24 THE MUNICIPAL | AUGUST 2021
ABOVE: The W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University has been approached by various businesses and organizations to come up with real-world solutions to problems. One of these projects was to design a brand-new garbage truck. (Shutterstock.com)
treatment system. City officials turned to the students to see if there was enough food waste in Mesa to make the project work. Students quickly determined there was more than enough food waste in Mesa to make the idea work. “We found a small sliver of Mesa
