With the help of about 60 graduate and undergraduate business students from Thompson Rivers University, the Kamloops, BC, Chamber of Commerce (known as a Board of Trade in some locales) will undertake the largest survey it’s ever attempted.

“To our knowledge, a survey of this magnitude has not been done with BC Chambers in recent years,” said Jaimie Drew, President of the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce. “This project not only will help us to see what our business community knows and thinks about the Chamber, but will be a fantastic hands-on project for our university students.”

“We survey our members annually to find out what speakers they want to hear, what services they need, etc, but this survey is unique in its focus and scope. We need to find out what people think of us and if what we do is relevant for businesses here. This survey will give us a much better idea of how the Chamber is doing and find out what we could do better,” said Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Deb McClelland.

“We conceived of the idea of an in-depth survey about six months ago, but it was a huge job, a daunting task,” she said, explaining that she brought the idea to the Chamber board in January, along with the idea of strengthening the Chamber’s relationship with the university.

Chamber board member and School of Business and Economics (SOBE) dean Murray Young jumped on the idea, and immediately contacted SOBE professor Len Hutt to see if he could pull off the project with student help.

Hutt got going right away. “The question was, how would we pull something of this magnitude off?” he said.

After getting sign-on from fellow faculty members Bernie Warren and Eric Lien, Hutt presented the idea to Master of Business Administration (MBA) students at TRU, emphasizing the fact that they’d be working on the project on a volunteer basis. Many applied, and after interviewing all applicants, Hutt and his team narrowed it down to six MBA students who would be responsible for supervising an additional 50 undergraduate business students.

“The whole idea of having MBA students head up the project is a great concept,” said McClelland. “Meeting the MBA students and seeing how capable they are alleviated any reservations. I’m excited about what they’re going to do for us.”

“The students will design the survey, compile the data and report the findings to the Chamber,” explained Brant Hasanen, First Vice President and incoming President of the Chamber. “But most importantly for them, they will learn firsthand about working with staff, having direct involvement with the business community and completing a meaningful project.”

The aim of the survey is to poll all 4600 licensed businesses in Kamloops: a daunting task by any standards, said Hutt, who, together with the other two faculty members, will mentor the almost-60 graduate and undergraduate students undertaking the survey.
The beginning of March saw the MBA students developing an on-line survey, while undergrad students started phoning to get the email addresses of the main contact person for each of the 4600 businesses, a job which also requires them to update the field.

“Some of those 4600 will be duplicate or stale listings,” explained Hutt, who expects the final number to be somewhat, but not a lot, less.

Calling 4600 businesses will take a bit of time, grinned Hutt, but the students expect to have the email list complete and the surveys to be sent out by the end of March.

After that, grad students will start analyzing the results.

“From my point of view,” explained Hutt. “We’re trying not to micromanage. The more the students do on their own, the more experience they’ll gain. We faculty will be here to act as mentors, to help them shape their ideas, and to give them some direction when they encounter obstacles, and to guide them through the various stages.

“This is a great hands-on experience for our undergrads, and great supervisory and project management experience for our MBA students. Mobilizing all the energies involved makes for a great learning experience and a vital service to the community.”

Survey analysis is expected to be complete by the end of April and a printed version ready for distribution in early May.

For more information, please contact Dr. Len Hutt at 250-371-5912 or by email.