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# MBA students at USC deliver presentations this week
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/mba-students-at-usc-deliver-presentations-this-week/
- Published: 2003-12-02T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:17:17.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Education, Downtown, #archive-import

*MBA students at USC deliver presentations this week*

It wasn’t just City Hall’s plan-ning department under the magnifying glass this fall. Also being studied by area graduate students were the local visitors bureau and a downtown restaurant.

Students were given the task to examine the entities and make suggestions on their operations. The three projects are part of 15 being conducted in southland cities by students of Dr. William Crookston, a Santa Monica resident and professor at the University of Southern California.

“This is a way we recruit our students. This is a way we give them internships,” said Crookston, who also serves as board vice president at the Santa Monica Visitors and Convention Bureau. “Is there a trend? Yes. More and more entrepreneurial schools are attempting to allow students to do practical projects.”

Crookston’s teams of four and five graduate students are delivering reports this week in all three Santa Monica projects. The studies began in September and lasted 12 weeks.

“This was one of the best projects I’ve ever worked on,” said Jason Barschi, 28, a Santa Monica resident and business student working on the visitors bureau project. “We really had a hands-on approach. We were given a lot of freedom to do what we wanted to do.”

For Barschi and four of his classmates, that meant coming up with a line of Santa Monica-themed souvenirs to be sold at the bureau’s walk-in visitor center at Santa Monica Place and from a cart on the Third Street Promenade. It’s a proposition that could net the bureau tens of thousands of dollars annually.

The seven-worker convention and visitors bureau oversees a $1.2 million annual budget funded by City Hall, said Debbie Lee, director of communications.

In a Monday presentation to bureau officials, the students suggested selling Santa Monica T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, tote bags and high-quality plastic street maps.

“We’re hoping that they’re going to have to be less reliant on city funding,” Barschi said.

The students designed the inventory and set up all the required paperwork for the test program. Their recommendations followed an analysis of the market based on interviews with tourists and residents, and discussions with bureau staffers.

Also on Monday was a preliminary presentation to Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce officials on an independent study of the often-criticized planning department (see related story). A final presentation on both projects will be delivered to officials in January.

Meanwhile, students from the third group are expected today to deliver their findings to West Hooker, owner of Locando del Lago, an Italian restaurant on the Promenade.

In their research, Crookston said the students met with Lago workers, visited other Promenade restaurants, interviewed customers and pored over credit card data. Among other things, the students are expected to recommend the restaurant entrance and bar be relocated to the Third Street Promenade, closer to where the foot traffic is. Currently, both are off of Arizona Avenue.

“In other words, enhance the layout so it would be a more attractive, ‘What’s going on here?’ site,” said Crookston, adding the students also drafted marketing plans to boost lunch business.

While the research projects give graduate students hands-on experience in the field, they also are saving the organizations consulting bills that could total $30,000 or more. But Crookston, who does some consulting on the side, said there’s little worry that the students will infringe on the outside market.

“These are short-term, narrow focus, fast turnaround types of projects,” he said, adding that although City Hall stands to directly benefit from two of the three local projects, they were chosen because of their commercial and entrepreneurial value to students.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 2, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/120203.pdf?ref=smdp.com)