By Arial Starks
Vanderbilt Business is thrilled to announce this year’s project partners for Accelerator® Summer Business Immersion. The Nashville Predators, a Nashville-based professional ice hockey team, HCA Healthcare, one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services, and energy drink brand Red Bull will all be working with the Accelerator students this summer.
Red Bull, HCA & The Nashville Predators Want a Gen Z Perspective
“Students will be working with 3 outstanding clients this year on a range of challenges,” says Cherrie Wilkerson, Associate Dean for Young Professional Programs and Faculty Director, Accelerator. “Red Bull, HCA, and the Nashville Predators are coming to Accelerator to get the Gen Z perspective on certain issues within their businesses. They also want to tap into the innovation and creativity that Accelerator students bring to projects. Each challenge is different, requiring skill sets that students will hone during their Accelerator experience.”
How Accelerator Works & Why It’s Worth It
Each summer, over the course of the 3-week immersive program, Accelerator students are tasked with ideating solutions to the challenges each of the project partners presents to them. Utilizing the research skills they gain through collaboration with the Walker Management Library, under the guidance of faculty mentors like Garnett Slatton, Vanderbilt Adjunct Professor of Management, the students showcase their original ideas in the form of group presentations. Through these projects, the students are able to gain real-world experience that is equivalent to 3 internships.
“In my opinion, Accelerator is the best thing that we do at Vanderbilt; It’s better than any class, program, or extracurricular,” says Slatton. “It just combines so many great elements. You take somebody who may have never thought about a business question before the day they arrive at the program, and turn them into people who are much more confident, much more capable, and who feel a sense of real direction.”
Application Deadline Coming Soon
If you are considering Accelerator Summer Business Immersion, you can check out projects from previous years here.
“As someone who was originally hesitant, I now look back and don’t know a better thing that I could have done with the first portion of my summer,” says Accelerator Class of 2023 participant Rece Roper. “I grew my professional skill set more in those 3 weeks than in the entirety of my first 2 years of undergrad.”
This year’s Accelerator Summer Business Immersion will run from June 2 through June 22. The deadline to apply to the program is Friday, April 19.
