Golfer Uses Capstone Project To Help Kickstart Soccer Program

Someday, hopefully more sooner than later, sports will resume and the world will look more like what we're used to. When that happens, soccer players in a small community on the other side of the world will have more to celebrate than just the return to normalcy thanks to a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh senior.

By mid-March, Sophia Mazurek, a marketing major from Germantown, had rounded up 50 soccer balls, hundreds of t-shirts and piles of other donated equipment to be shipped to a place called Kenji Farms in Kenya. It's the cause-driven path she selected for her College of Business (COB) capstone project, which was drawn up and executed—as best it could under the circumstances brought on by the coronavirus crisis—over the spring term.

"I'm super excited to continue to keep working on this project," said Mazurek, "and it won't be stopping when I am done with this class. This is something that I will be continuing to do after college.

"I am also very happy that I started this right away in the semester so that I was able to receive donations early on."

The project is part of marketing professor Mike Tippins' Business Growth and Development class. Called Moving the Needle, the assignment is one of the culminating experience courses for the COB, meaning students pull together everything they've learned and apply it. It is fully student defined—they come up with the idea, make a plan and execute it.

Mazurek, who would be playing out her senior year with the Titans golf team if not for the crisis, zeroed in on her plans in February and connected with her roommate's aunt, Heather Dellamater, who helped organize the gospel-focused African community. Among the developments happening at Kenji Farm is the building of a soccer complex. Mazurek's donations will help with the project.

"I've been seeing pictures and videos of kids and adults playing on it so that's very heartwarming to see," Mazurek said earlier this spring. "Just knowing that I was a part of making this field happen feels really good."

Beyond the balls, clothing and equipment, her Moving the Needle plans also included a monetary fundraiser, likely including a team-up with an Oshkosh restaurant or two. There also have been talks about sending two coaches from a Milwaukee-area soccer complex to Kenya. It's all sort of on hold for the time being, much like the actual delivery of the goods.

Tippins' class launched about five years ago and this semester includes about 70 students. Each is asked to complete the Moving the Needle assignment and it can either be centered around an entrepreneurial idea or cause. Part of the challenge is the parameters are minimal. It can go wherever the students want to take it.

Mazurek is an example of a student who went the cause route. Others include Kurtis Hoffman, a senior marketing major from Fond du Lac, who raised more than $500 for the Oshkosh dog shelter NEW PAWSibilities. That sum was enough to feed the animals on site for a month. Fellow marketing major Jesse Liverette organized an online fundraiser and gathered about $150 to aid the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry.

Tippins said the Moving the Needle project is an opportunity to showcase what these COB students are capable of outside the classroom.

"We know that they can take direction and do what is asked—complete this case study, write a report about that company—but so can every other college of business student at every other university," he said. "What this project shows to employers is that our students not only come up with great ideas, but they also are doers."

Written by Shane Nyman, UWO University Marketing & Communications