Town & Gown Business Capstone Experience

The Town and Gown Business Capstone Experience, now in its eighth year, is a collaborative effort developed by the Guarini School of Business at Saint Peter’s University and the Hudson County Chamber of Commerce. This program engages teams of senior-level, honors students with local Chamber of Commerce member businesses to work on a rigorous business consulting project. These businesses provide the students with an actual challenge they are facing and the students draw upon their previous three and a half years of business curriculum to analyze the causes and develop solutions.

The students write a detailed report and present their findings and recommendations to their peers and a panel of judges. Our expert judges for 2021 included Nicholas Brown ‘18, Anica Bustamante ‘18, Mary Jain ’79 and Deidre Viney, an business partner alumna of the Town & Gown consulting program. This provides students an opportunity to apply theoretical business concepts and gain valuable real-world business experience. This year’s final event and competition was held virtually on April 29th.

The participating businesses this year were Urban Paddle, Jersey City Theater Centre (JCTC), and Art House Productions. The winning team was the JCTC team, including Vincenzo Marna, Crystal Newton, Angie Benavides and Rafael Figuereo. Students were guided by Professor Ray Butkus in this valuable real-world educational program.