By School of Business student Thomas J. Moquet

商学院学生Thomas J. Moquet

On March 16, Kendall College seniors from the hospitality, culinary and businessprograms came together to exhibit our hard work as we held a tradeshow and presented our final pitches for Kendall’s Capstone project. It all started in October of last year when we were told that our project would be to conceptualize and plan the development of a new hotel in downtown Chicago. The site was at 111 W Wacker, right on the Chicago River where building had begun in 2008 for the Shangri La Hotel. Apart from being informed it was compulsory to have three operations within the plan (hotel, retail and a restaurant), we were left to decide on the exact details of our concept.

3月16日，当我们举办贸易展、并为肯代尔Capstone项目做最后的展示时，肯代尔大学的酒店、西餐西点和商务课程的高年级学生见证了我们的辛勤工作。所有活动开始于去年10月，那时我们得知我们的项目是构思和策划一家位于芝加哥商业中心的新酒店。地址选在W Wacker111号，恰好位于芝加哥河（Chicago River）上，而且2008年香格里拉酒店（Shangri La Hotel）在那里开始施工。计划内必须有3个运营项目（酒店、零售和餐厅），其它细节我们可以根据自己的想法自行设计。

We were put in teams of five or six with representatives from each school to add our individual expertise to the overall project. I was fortunate enough to be put in a fantastic group that had a strong multi-cultural leaning including students from the US, UK, Mexico, Spain and China. Our team name “International Icons” was very apt! Over the first 10 weeks of the course we covered a wide range of topics and guest speakers from building development, building management, marketing, finance and culinary. Using these tools and resources we began to build our concept and brand in preparation for the final part of the project.

我们和各个学校的代表被分到五六个人的小组内，为整个项目加入我们自己的个人专业技能。我很幸运，被分到了一个非常有趣的小组，小组成员拥有多文化背景，他们分别来自美国、英国、墨西哥、西班牙和中国。我们团队的名字为“国际标志”（International Icons），是不是很贴切！前10周的课程覆盖了各种各样的主题，而且还有擅长建筑发展、建筑管理、营销、金融和烹饪的客座演讲者不时为我们开展讲座。

In the final half of the course we had to develop extensive marketing, finance, operations and culinary plans which were used to compile the final report, which for most teams meant a hundred page business plan. The final day was an amazing experience and an ideal opportunity for all the teams to exhibit the skill sets that we had developed during our time as Kendall students. My team was fortunate enough to win two awards for best business plan and for best culinary presentation which legitimized all the hard work and effort we had put in. It was a refreshing experience to be given so much freedom and scope to create a complete business and use the creativity and passion we all share to make the project a success.

课程的后半段，我们不得不制定大量的营销、金融、运营和烹饪计划，用于汇编最终的报告，对于大多数团队而言这意味着100页的商业计划。课程最后一天是一场令人难忘的经历，对于所有团队来说都是一次展示自己在肯代尔所学技能的绝佳机会。我的团队非常幸运，获得了2项大奖，最佳商业计划奖和最佳烹饪展示奖，这是对我们所投入的所有努力的认可。被给予如此多的自由和范围去制定一个商业计划、运用我们的创造力和热情使这个项目获得成功，这真是一次令人耳目一新的经历。