Illustration by Leigh Douglas

Following UC-wide attempts to diversify the undergraduate population, business and management school deans and executives gathered to announce the unveiling of a fellowship for students from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on Tuesday.

Together, Robert S. Sullivan of the Rady School of Management and Rich Lyons, dean of UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, announced the fellowship’s inauguration. The fellowship will seek to introduce “business curriculum in an exciting format,” to first-year students who have never been exposed to business and management studies, Lyons said.

Over time, Lyons hopes this fellowship will “bring the kind of diversity, creativity, and innovation our programs are built on and that California is built on.”

By bringing students from HBCUs, which are primarily located in the southeastern United States, Lyons and his fellow administrators hope to “attract as diverse as a population as we possibly can.”

The fellowship is geared toward students from HBCUs outside of California in efforts to entice them to join the UC student body.

“HBCUs are a terrific pool of talent,” Lyons said of the decision to focus on HBCUs in the first stages of the fellowship.

The goal of the HBCU fellowship, said Lyons, is to get first-year students to begin thinking about their futures.

“We want to excite them about the world of business and their potential, their role as leaders,” Lyons said.

The program itself will be offered to 25 recipients who will be awarded an all-expenses-paid two week Summer Institute for Emerging Managers and Leaders session at one of the six UC business schools. The six schools include the UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA and UC Riverside business and management schools.

This year the inaugural session will be held at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Berkeley has been a hub for start-up companies and focal point for recruiting new talent, making it an apt location for the fellowship.

“You’ve never seen anything like this — it’s a kind of a beehive for enterprise,” Lyons said. “Why not give them a taste of what we’re best at?”

Anthem Blue Cross and Wells Fargo are funding the fellowship. They will cover the roughly $100,000 a year required for the two-week sessions.

“We have been very excited about how much support we’re getting from the private sector — we know we need it because it’s not coming from the public sector,” Lyons said, predicting a trend in increased university donations from non-federal monies.

Erika Walker, executive director of Undergraduate Program Haas School of Business, has been working with a similar program for business training, the Business for Arts, Sciences, and Engineering (BASE) program. BASE has been running every summer for the past 15 years, and served as a template for the HBCU fellowship.

Walker will be implementing the inaugural program at Haas-Berkeley this summer. She hopes the program will spur students into eventually pursuing an MBA at one of the UC campuses.

“We’re looking for that kind of transformative change,” Walker said. “We’re just trying to excite them and energize them about what these various opportunities [in business] are.”

Jacqui Smollett, a first-year global economics major and SUA representative for African/Black Student Alliance, said while the program is a step in the right direction, diversity among UC faculty needs to be addressed.

“There are currently very few faculty of color at UC Santa Cruz,” Smollett said. “It is nice to be taught by a diverse community.”

At UC business schools, the major itself is also highly impacted. Of HBCU graduates, 49-64 percent are business majors, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

With classes filled to the brim, Smollett says it is important to have “different viewpoints from different people on how we do business.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Santa Cruz has your usual fast food chains: McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, Burger King and now a Panda Express. And it may soon be welcoming another. Despite the city’s history of favoring local restaurants over chains, In-N-Out Burger is setting its sights on Surf City.

In-N-Out, the famed burger chain of the West Coast, could come to Santa Cruz, said Carl Van Fleet, vice president of planning and development.

“Our real estate team has been looking at Santa Cruz County for some time and we hope to be there in the not-too-distant future,” Van Fleet said in an e-mail to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

But if In-N-Out were to come to Santa Cruz, it would have to jump through some hurdles regarding the city’s drive-through policy.

“By our Zoning Ordinance, the Downtown Recovery Plan, and the Mission Street Plan, drive-throughs are not allowed on Mission Street or in the downtown area,” Juliana Rebagliati, director of planning and community development of Santa Cruz, said in an e-mail. “They are allowed in other areas of town, such as Ocean Street, but there are many qualifying standards that serve to limit the number of locations where they may be built — such as they must be a certain distance away from a signaled intersection, they must be a certain distance away from an existing drive-through, et cetera.”

Is Santa Cruz becoming more and more open to chain restaurants and franchises?

On any given night, the new Panda Express near Safeway might have a line out the door. Since it opened Jan. 19, Panda is “doing OK,” manager Ken Chan said.

“We are meeting expectations,” Chan said. “They [our customers] are mostly locals, some students. We probably have stolen some [customers from other restaurants].”

Second-year student Charlene Tran said she is excited about the new Panda Express but even more excited about a possible In-N-Out.

“In-N-Out is the king of all fast-food restaurants,” Tran said. “It’s delicious, and they have the friendliest people.”

Founded in 1948, the chain now has over 250 restaurants across the West Coast, most of which are in California. Local business manager Seth Landig, of Betty Burgers on Seabright Avenue, is not too worried about the possibility of an In-N-Out.

“Any burger place would affect us, but we have a little different meat,” Landig said. “We’re not a fast-food place either, more of a restaurant. I mean, our burgers take 10 minutes to make.”

The limits on drive-throughs in Santa Cruz have been active for nearly 20 years and it might force In-N-Out to look at other nearby cities.

The search can be seen on Facebook, where Kurt Overmeyer, Watsonville city economic development manager, has set up a page to garner local support. Santa Cruz also has residents dedicated to bringing in an In-N-Out, and it looks like Santa Cruz is winning.

While “In-N-Out to Watsonville” currently has 3,180 fans, Santa Cruz’s “We Need an In-N-Out in Santa Cruz” Facebook page had over 9,000. In-N-Out vice president of planning and development Van Fleet said the use of social media would help the company’s decision.

“Community support is an important factor for us, and a Facebook site with numerous likers could be influential,” he wrote to the Sentinel.

Landig, manager of Betty Burgers, expressed confidence that local restaurants would still be competitive.

“We’ve always had some chains in Santa Cruz,” he said. “Some will come and go, but people who live in Santa Cruz will tend to frequent the local spots.”

At the end of Friday night Jackie Olin, the creator of the business Sustainabites Baby Food, was announced the winner of UCSC’s first Business Plan Competition. Photo by Morgan Grana.

“Do you know what’s in your food? What about your baby’s food? The average baby food sits on a shelf for two years before ending [up] in front of your child,” said Jackie Olin, one of seven finalists in UC Santa Cruz’s first-ever Business Plan Competition (BPC), as she presented her business plan to a panel of judges. “Sustainabites is a local, fresh and seasonal baby food company that will work to provide consumers with ‘farm-to-fork’ information, where you can trace your child’s food back to the farm.” 

Olin, a recent UCSC graduate, was not only a finalist but also the winner of the competition. After all seven teams presented their future companies and entrepreneurships, a panel of eight judges, — constituted of successful CEOs, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and lawyers from Santa Cruz and Silicon Valley — retired to a quiet room to decide on a winner. 

The Ringold Rotunda, where the reception was held, was anything but quiet. The event was a success in attracting people from the city, the university, and “over the hill.” Everyone mingled noisily in this ambitious and creative atmosphere, as students rubbed shoulders with CEOs and inventors.

Santa Cruz mayor Cynthia Mathews attended the event. 

“The energy, the excitement and the potential in this room is amazing,” Mathews said. “It’s everything we hoped it would be.”

As for Olin’s Sustainabites, Mathews said she is happy with the judges’ choice. 

“Our goal and motivation in this competition was to help a business that would stay and prosper in Santa Cruz,” Mathews said. “It’s a perfect match.”

The BPC was organized by a group of seven highly motivated UCSC students led by Eric Gonzalez, a recent UCSC graduate and former president of the University Economic Association. 

Divya Sharma is the co-chair of the BPC and a second-year majoring in business management economics and industrial engineering and operations research. 

“There have been some ups and downs, and I’ve loved every second of it,” Sharma said. “I’ve had students come to me and say that having this competition has changed the direction they were heading towards. It’s been a very rewarding four months, and the competition has far exceeded our expectations.” 

Although Sharma is transferring next year, this competition, she said, will be her lasting legacy at UCSC. 

Chancellor George Blumenthal said he was enthusiastic about the effort put into the BPC by the team of students. 

The competition represents “what we are as a university — encouraging students and their ideas,” he said.

“Who knows, maybe they’ll create the next Microsoft,” Blumenthal joked. “On second thought, maybe not something that big. Maybe just the next Google.”

With other teams boasting online services, video game programming, pharmaceutical compliances and biomolecular engineering, Olin said she saw herself as the local underdog. But in the end, her hard work was rewarded with a $12,000 jumbo check. 

“This is awesome,” Olin said. “Don’t ever worry about being the dark horse. This is it right here — this is what will enable us to stay in Santa Cruz. I have all the permits, the knowledge, the kitchen, everything lined up.”

Thanks to the competition, Olin said, Sustainabites will become a reality, and “you will see us in the farmers market two months from now.”

This premier BPC was an immense success, creating important partnerships and generating over $20,000 in funding and donations. BPC founder Gonzalez has big plans for the young competition as preparations are made for next year. 

“I hope it becomes a foundation for the university,” Gonzalez said. “The students here are entrepreneurial, creative and the best people I’ve ever met. They’re people I can count on to make a difference.”