Amy receiving the Rising Star Award
BHP Senior Amy Enrione has accomplished a great deal in her four years here. Coming into the program, she knew she wanted to bring service learning into the curriculum, and through a lot of hard work and perseverance, she was able to accomplish that. She has been honored with multiple awards, including the BBA/MPA Rising Star Award, the Pal—Make a Difference Award, the Texas Exes Presidential Leadership Award, the Cactus StandoUT Award, the BHP Outstanding Student Award, and the UBC George Mitchell Award, and was selected as a finalist for the Texas Parents Outstanding Student Award.
As a student in New York, how did you learn about BHP and what made you decide to choose UT and BHP?
I came from a big Longhorn family. My mom and aunts and uncles all went to UT, so it was always on my radar as a school I should consider. I was interested in business and started looking into McCombs and the Business Honors Program. I was blown away by BHP’s quality of the education. I love working in teams and am not competitive, so the collaborative BHP environment fit my personality. I received the Texas Exes Forty Acres Scholarship, which is a merit-based full-ride, so that made the decision very easy for me.
What do you think out-of-state students don’t know about BHP and UT that you wish they did?
One thing I realized once I decided to come to UT is that BHP’s incredible reputation hasn’t quite spread outside of Texas. My friends really didn’t know how great of a school McCombs is—it was never a school they’d considered. This lack of knowledge about the school is a real shame, so I try plug the program and UT to my connections in NY whenever possible.
You worked hard to bring the community service requirement to UT. What was the process for doing that and where does it stand now?
I started by doing a lot of research on what other schools are doing, particularly Wharton’s Management 100 class. The thing I liked most about Wharton was that every business freshman did skills-based service as part of their core curriculum. I think it is so important to give back to your community using your specific talents. When I saw UT didn’t have a similar program, I decided I wanted to bring that opportunity to UT. I also didn’t want that program at Wharton to be a selling point over UT for future students.
After researching the benefits of active learning and engagement and the pros and cons of the Wharton model, I wrote a proposal and brought it to Dr. Prentice. He felt it was worth pursuing, so he brought my proposal to the Undergraduate Program Committee, who provided feedback on it. We then I presented the idea to Dean Platt, the BBA dean. He became a huge advocate for it. I had originally envisioned it as a full class, but we kept running into issues trying to do that. We brainstormed and came back to the table with a shorter requirement targeted all freshmen. After two years of work, a four hour service requirement launched in 2014 as part of the McCombs Freshmen Interest Group (FIG) program. We worked with the Undergraduate Program Office and the Longhorn Center for Community Engagement to bring the requirement to life. The LCCE, particularly Dr. Katie Pritchett and Dr. Suchi Gururaj, have been hugely instrumental in the process of implementing this program.
The impact of the program has been incredible; I’m so glad that we’ve been able to connect McCombs students with their communities in a meaningful way. In the first year the program had a $51,000 impact on the City of Austin, and this year the impact grew to $54,000. To incentive students, we created a friendly competition between FIGs that measured service hours per student. 92% of McCombs freshmen participated in the program. The LCCE published a study on the service requirement, and found that 71% of students felt more connected to their FIG and McCombs because of the service.
What was the next step after having launched a successful program at McCombs?
This year I started working on bringing that program University-wide. The two-year McCombs pilot was instrumental in bringing a service component of FIGs school-wide; it made it very easy to show the University that a service requirement was impactful and didn’t cost much money. I worked with the LCCE to provide the FIG mentors with all the materials they needed to implement the program. The LCCE has already trained all of next year’s the FIG mentors in how to facilitate a meaningful service project and post-service reflection; the service requirement will officially be a part of the FIG curriculum next fall for all UT freshmen.
I am also trying to get service learning courses to be recognized on the registrar so students can search for those classes easily. We think this will really increase demand for service learning courses. This project is still in the works and we will hopefully be working with the new Provost to do something in the future.
What do you feel you will leave having accomplished over your four years here?
I feel that my biggest lasting legacy will be the community service program. It is now institutionalized and will continue to take place for the foreseeable future. My work in this area will continue to have impact far after I leave campus. On a personal level, I have really enjoyed mentoring and giving back to the BHP community. I still grab lunch with and run case interviews with some of my mentees from last year through the BHP Peer Mentor Program. I hope my dedication to helping my peers has inspired people to really invest in each other.
How did you successfully juggle all your activities and school work?
I am very organized and love calendars and check lists. They really help me plan out my day. I plan down to the 15-minute block. I also color-code my calendars so I know what I am spending time on during the week. If I see something is taking over my week, I can prioritize and not commit to another event for that organization.
I also don’t commit to things I’m not passionate about. I try to only join organizations or take leadership positions because I really care about the org. That way, I am motivated by my activities because I am doing the things I enjoy. This strategy helps me avoid burn-out, even with a packed schedule.
If you could go back and give advice to yourself as a freshman, what would you say?
Freshman me was really ambitious and that certainly helped. Keep that drive and enthusiasm because that is what gets you places, but also be willing to re-evaluate and adjust what you are doing. I was really set on a certain path and even when I realized it wasn’t the best path for me, I stayed with it longer than I should have. At some point I realized I needed to cut ties with things I wasn’t passionate about, but this point came a bit late for me. I would have had a lot more time to do the things I cared about if I had cut ties sooner. I am currently not involved in anything I was involved in freshman year. It takes times to find the things you love and figure out what really excites you. You don’t really know yourself yet as a freshman. Know that it is okay to let go.
What’s next for you?
I will be working as a Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company in Houston. I will be a generalist, but I love operations and pricing, so I am going to try to focus on these areas. In the long-term I want to work in the non-profit sector. I want to learn as much as I can about operational effectiveness while at McKinsey, and then use that expertise to streamline operations for an education nonprofit.