Bring real business challenges to Questrom students.
At Boston University Questrom School of Business, students learn by working on the kinds of problems organizations face every day: growth questions, market opportunities, customer insights, strategy decisions, operational challenges, innovation needs, and emerging business issues.
The Center for Action Learning helps make those opportunities possible. Through the Center, partners can bring real organizational challenges into the Questrom learning environment, giving students meaningful opportunities to analyze problems, develop recommendations, and build career-ready experience while offering organizations fresh thinking and practical insight.
Working with faculty, staff, alumni, and external partners, the Center helps connect real business challenges to student learning experiences across Questrom.
These opportunities may take shape as:
✓ Course-based projects
✓ Consulting engagements
✓ Case competitions & business challenges
✓ Mentoring & advising
✓ Industry exposure through treks outside the classroom
Action Learning is foundational to the Questrom experience
The Center for Action Learning at Questrom creates pathways for organizations and industry partners to collaborate with students across our many business degree programs.
From our MBAs to our specialty masters to our undergraduates, Questrom students tackle a wide range of real-world, results-driven projects and competitions that get them prepared for that first day on the job.
How Action Learning connects to QXL
The Center for Action Learning supports Questrom’s broader approach to experiential learning, known as QXL — Questrom Experiential Learning, the foundation of our hands-on business education.
The Center for Action Learning is one of the ways Questrom supports that approach through relationships with partners, alumni, companies, nonprofits, startups, public agencies, and community organizations.
High-Impact Ways to Engage
There are many ways to engage with Questrom students through Action Learning. Whether you want to bring a business challenge into a course, work with a student consulting team, mentor students, judge a competition, host a trek, or open a door through your network, the Center for Action Learning can help identify the right pathway.
Core opportunities include Action Learning courses, the Questrom Consulting Lab, and case competitions, but there are countless other ways to get involved and make a meaningful impact.
In-Class Applied Learning
Classroom-based Client Projects with Real Impact:
These built-in experiential opportunities give students across degree programs hands-on experience while offering clients fresh perspectives, actionable recommendations, and a low-lift way to engage with emerging talent.
Questrom Consulting Lab
Student Consultants Deliver Premium -Quality Insights:
Student teams of top talent work together on custom scopes to produce insights and solutions at a fraction of traditional consulting costs.
Whether you’re exploring new market opportunities, optimizing customer experiences, or driving digital transformation, our teams bring fresh perspectives, data-driven insights, and actionable solutions.
Cases and Challenges
One Business Case… Many Innovative Solutions
Questrom student teams tackle complex business challenges under pressure, building confidence and leadership skills along the way.
Industry partners help make these competitions possible by providing cases, sponsoring events, judging presentations, mentoring teams, and more.
More Engagement Pathways
Mentor and advise students
- Speak in a class or program session
- Lead an industry workshop
- Serve as a student mentor
- Advise a student project team
- Join a project review or feedback session
- Share an alumni story or project example
Create career and industry access
- Host a student trek
- Recruit Questrom students
- Post jobs and internships
- Engage with student clubs
- Connect your company or organization to Questrom
Invest in the ecosystem
- Make a gift to support Action Learning
- Support student teams or competition travel
- Champion Action Learning within your network
- Sponsor a competition
Industry Connections
Every year the Center for Action Learning sources dozens of client projects, building important relationships and opening the doorway for our students to collaborate with major US and globally-based companies as well as smaller local organizations. From Fortune 500s to non-profits to municipalities to early-stage startups, our partnerships cover the spectrum in both size and sector.
Recent Action Learning Projects
Why partner with Questrom?
Partners work with Questrom students because they want to support student development — and because student teams can bring curiosity, structure, research, and fresh perspective to real business questions.
Action Learning opportunities are designed to create value on both sides: students gain career-ready experience, and partners gain fresh thinking from motivated graduate and undergraduate business students.
Depending on the opportunity, partners receive:
Valuable Insights
- Student research and analysis and strategic recommendations
- Market, customer, or competitor insights
- New ideas for growth, operations, innovation, or engagement
Additional Capacity
- Tackle projects you lack the time, resources or expertise to complete on your own
- Return on investment: modest time commitments for partners and low or no associated costs
Talent Pipeline
Raise the profile of your organization and connect with student talent on a deeper level than possible through interviews or recruiting events
Mentoring
Provide a meaningful impact to the education of future business leaders
What our partners say…
For partners, Action Learning projects create an opportunity to bring a real question into a structured learning environment while helping students practice the work of business before they are expected to lead it. Don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what our partners have to say:
“By working with Questrom students through the Center for Action Learning, we were able to obtain real voice of the customer insights and competitive intelligence that an in-house sales team cannot provide.
The insights that this group produced are invaluable and will help us with both short-term sales goals and targets as well as longer-term strategy and product enhancements.”
Chief Strategy and Operating Officer at Bascom-Turner Instruments
Emma Taylor
Founder, Sisu Boston Physical Therapy and Performance
“As the founder of a startup healthcare business, working with the students was an exceptional experience. They approached the project with curiosity, professionalism, and a genuine desire to understand the heart of my business. Meeting with them became something I looked forward to, as their insights were thoughtful, well-researched, and immediately applicable.
The process helped me clarify my brand positioning, sharpen my messaging, and step back to see the business more objectively, which was incredibly valuable at this stage of growth. I highly recommend this action learning experience to any organization.”
“I was most impressed by how quickly the students were able to immerse themselves in a highly specialized and complex healthcare environment. Therapeutic apheresis is not a typical business school case study, yet they rapidly developed a strong understanding of the clinical, economic, and operational dimensions of the market.
I was also struck by the quality of their questions. Rather than simply validating our assumptions, they challenged us to think differently about market prioritization, partnerships, access models, and long-term value creation. Their willingness to explore unconventional ideas and connect insights across industries brought tremendous value to the project.”
“We were very impressed with Questrom students. Spencer Stuart has been exploring realistic ways to reduce our emissions, particularly around business travel.
The sources and real-world examples shared helped us understand what’s happening in the market and how companies of similar size and industry are also approaching these challenges.
We found the program to be very meaningful and impactful, and it has inspired us to explore more student action learning programs in the future.”
Vivian Chin
Manager, Sustainability, Spencer Stuart
Mohamed Kante
Founder & Chief Nerd
iNERDE
“The final presentations delivered strategies that were thoughtful, innovative, and genuinely impressive.
I’m more confident than ever that iNERDE Academy is on the path to becoming a revolutionary platform — one with transformative impact across the African continent. This is what happens when academia and real-world mission collide with intention.
Massive shout-out to Prof. Marshall Van Alstyne, and to the incredible students. If you have a real platform challenge and want brilliant minds wrestling with it — watch for Prof. Van Alstyne’s next call for proposals.”
“I value the kind of in-depth and articulate perspectives that Questrom’s student teams deliver. I was consistently surprised by their speed in being able to diagnose and understand the challenges we were facing.
Through in-depth conversations with the students, their research and analysis, and the final deliverable they provided, we were able to create a detailed roadmap for STRATCO to follow. We look forward to implementing their proposed business plan.”
Robert Sedaghatpour (Questom ‘99)
Principal Owner
STRATCO Property Solutions
The Center for Action Learning Team
Meet the team dedicated to building connections between Questrom students and industry partners. Through project development, partnership support, and hands-on coordination, the team helps create meaningful opportunities for students to apply their learning in real-world settings.
Connect with us.
If you’ve got questions about collaborating, contact our team.
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Peter Howard
Professor of the Practice, Marketing
Executive Director, Questrom Center for Action Learning
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John Temps
Associate Director, Action Learning
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Gregory Stoller
Master Lecturer, Strategy and Innovation
Director, Case Competitions
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Alexandra Macey
Business Development Manager
Not sure where to start?
You do not need to know the exact format your idea should take. If you have a business challenge, project idea, mentoring interest, company connection, student opportunity, or alumni story to share, the Center for Action Learning can help determine the best next step.