An atmosphere of celebration permeated the UTDsolv Capstone Expo, a biannual student competition at the Naveen Jindal School of Management in which teams submit their senior capstone projects for consideration. This time around, 14 projects were selected to compete from among 144 entries.
Student teams partnered with businesses and other organizations through the UTDsolv Capstone Project, a student consulting platform aimed at developing solutions for real-world challenges that businesses and organizations face, particularly when they lack the time and resources to seek answers. This semester, three of the participating organizations were from within The University of Texas at Dallas: the Center for BrainHealth, the Center For Asian Studies and the Department of Bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science.
Jindal School undergraduate students collaborated in small groups on projects over the course of the spring semester. Students worked under the guidance of faculty and company advisors.
“UTDsolv offers a great value proposition,” Parks said. “Through this program, client companies work directly with UTD student teams in developing innovative and unbiased solutions for specific business challenges and opportunities.”
UTDsolv gives students the opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge in real-world operational settings. Eligible students are seniors who are nearing the completion of their coursework in various academic fields including accounting, business administration, global business, finance, healthcare management, human resource management, information technology and systems, marketing, and supply chain management.
In the spring 2025 semester, 144 student teams worked on 84 projects with 65 companies and organizations.
Fourteen of those teams were selected as finalists. They showcased their projects at the expo. From that group, two first-place teams and two runners-up were chosen.
Also receiving first-place honors was the commercialization team from the Center for BrainHealth. Team members were David Nguyen, a finance senior; Minahil Khan, a senior double major in finance and economics; Paramveer Grewal, an accounting senior; Alex Vu, a healthcare and leadership and management senior, and Jermmy Wilson, a healthcare management senior. Project objectives included conducting a market analysis of 38 companies in the brain health and wellness industry, evaluating their strategic positioning and relevance to the Center for BrainHealth’s mission and identifying the collaboration potential, identifying key industry trends, threats and opportunities.
“At the Center for BrainHealth, we face many complex issues,” said Dr. Andrew Nevin, a research professor and inaugural director of the Brainomics Venture in the center. “JSOM’s Capstone program has given us eight incredible teams of students over the past two terms. Each one worked on critical issues for us, and we gained valuable knowledge from each one. We look forward to working with four new teams next year. Also, we were incredibly gratified that a team working with us this semester received first place in the recent UTDsolv competition.”
Runners-up were the competitive analysis and marketing team from Outpave, a software company focused on making administrative tasks easier for construction and trade businesses. Team members were Andin Lac, a business administration senior; Nabeela Mariha, a healthcare management senior; Pari Prasad, a finance senior; Aaron Tran, a computer information systems and technology senior; and Yash Patel, a computer information systems and technology senior. Their project aimed to transform marketing, build awareness of the company, and drive engagement.
The Kahawa team from Dillon Morgan Consulting Inc. was also a runner-up. Team members were Rachel Pazhoor, a marketing senior; Farah Alamawi, an accounting senior; Lindsey Magee, a finance senior; Cali McCulloch, a supply chain management senior; and Jaqueline Chavez Hernandez, a business administration senior. Their objective was to improve operations, customer experience and marketing.
Khan and Grewal, both members of the winning Center for BrainHealth team, reflected on their experiences with the center and their project.
“Our project was big on research,” Khan said. “There was a lot. It focused on alternate processes to approaches to commercialization. They wanted to know what others were doing. We also worked on ways to expand their services. From the finance side, we really learned the importance of communicating with your clients.
Khan said she didn’t know much about brain health when she started the project but that it was fascinating.
“None of the members of our team knew each other at the beginning, but we worked very well together,” she said.
For Grewal, the experience overall was positive.
“Working on this project was a great learning experience,” he said. “One of the best things was that we had the opportunity to network with a lot of people. We did have one challenge. One of our team members had to drop out due to an emergency. The team worked together to cover their part of the project.”
Four teams consulted for the Center for Asian Studies on two projects, with two teams assigned to each one, said founding director Dr. Dennis Kratz, a senior associate provost at UT Dallas.
“We had a lot of people, and we had a strategic plan to improve the center’s recognition nationally,” he said.
The plan included the creation of two podcasts, one for young adults and one for children, to help spread the word about contributions of the Asian community to the technology industry and to foster communication between different communities.
“The experience was great,” Kratz said. “I was very impressed with the quality of the students and with their willingness to work. I also was impressed by their teamwork. That is something I feel strongly about, being able to work together. It was a positive experience from Day One. I like the model David (Parks) and Edwin (Van Der Vlist) have designed.”
Senthil Velayudham, an adjunct lecturer at the Jindal School and COO at NADA Technologies who worked on the Center for Asian Studies’ projects, expressed his appreciation for the design of the projects.
“I am so impressed with the program that David (Parks) and Edwin (Van Der Vlist) have created,” he said. “This year, we looked at ways we could kick up the competition even more. We have new judges, and teams have only seven minutes to impress them with their presentations. This program gives students the opportunity to gain valuable experience without stress. They work for 16 weeks to address real-world problems for the companies we work with. To be one of the 14 finalists is exciting for them. I think the students killed it this year. They really took it seriously.”
Zach Ahlstedt, CEO and co-founder of Outpave, had only positive things to say about working with the students. He appreciated the high-quality level of work the students provided and the solutions they found.
“Part of me wanted to do this to give back and mentor students,” he said. “We worked with two teams—one worked on marketing and the other on competitive analysis and spending management. It was the coolest thing to watch them work. We told them, ‘Act like you are the owners of the company’ and help us grow our client base. We were able to see that in action. They went out and talked to potential customers. They also suggested we put customer testimonials on our website, and we have done that.”
Kimia Penton, BS’02, senior director of global program management for McKesson and a lecturer in the Jindal School, worked with students on a supply chain optimization project.
“This is the most relevant, impactful course for graduating seniors,” she said. “What sets it apart is that students are working on corporate projects with real-life impacts working with senior people in companies and creating meaningful projects. It also allows them to build their networks.”
David Matthews, an associate professor of practice in the Jindal School’s Marketing Area and director of the Center for Retail Innovation and Strategy Excellence (RISE) at the Jindal School, served as one of the judges for the competition.
“The projects were really high quality and company sizes ran the whole gambit,” he said. “Judging was a challenge because we were not comparing apples to apples.”
Other judges were Pat Dahlberg, vice president of aftersales at McLaren; Adrian Terry, vice president of operational excellence and IT transformation at JP Morgan; Raj Lalsare, founder and CEO of Cohort Science; John Allen, president and managing agent of Community Insurance Advisors; Gary Kusin, former CEO of FedEx Office who founded and led GameStop and multiple other companies; Tim Reazor, MBA’18 & MS’19, co-founder of Fifth & Cherry; and Mary King, director of the Graduate Accounting Program at JSOM.
Kusin was also the keynote speaker. He shared stories and advice from his book, “Always Learning—Lessons on Leveling Up from GameStop to Laura Mercier and Beyond.”
One of the big keys to his success, he said, is being willing to “work harder than the next guy.”
Kusin, who mentors people in underserved communities and advises an array of public and private companies on strategy. He touched briefly on his support of the use of artificial intelligence in business, saying it allows work to be done more efficiently and at lower costs.
At the end of his talk, he gave the audience his email address and invited them to contact him with questions or for discussions.
The collaboration between teams of Jindal School business students and local companies and other organizations has yielded positive experiences and outcomes for both parties. Since the launch of the UTDsolv program, 4,608 students have partnered with 405 companies on 509 projects, with a total value exceeding $11 million.
”Clients have reported very high satisfaction levels with the quality of our students and the outcomes of the projects,” Parks said. “We have a number of companies that have continuing engagement throughout several semesters which attests to the program’s success.”
