Introduction to the Experience
Business students at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) have a marked advantage because of requirements at the school. When the university was relatively young, the College of Business Administration (CoBA) grew rapidly in reputation and rigor. One of the defining events for the business students, at CSUSM, is (was) during their final year and semesters of their college career. This event is a requirement to complete a Senior Experience project in conjunction with a local organization out in the business world.
This semester long commitment is a capstone requirement for all business students and is (was) unlike traditional exams or reports. This project is (was) designed to bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world situations, helping students to get a head start on the next phase of their lives. The Senior Experience was more than just a class for me—it was a professional engagement. Students are (were) expected to operate as consultants, applying everything we had learned in marketing, finance, operations, and management to deliver meaningful solutions to our assigned organization.
What is the Senior Project at CSUSM’s CoBA?
At CSUSM, students pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration through the CoBA are required to complete a capstone course known as the Senior Experience Project. This one-semester, 3-unit course is designed to integrate and apply the knowledge students have gained throughout their business education.
Working in teams, students engage in real-world consulting projects with local businesses, nonprofits, or government agencies on their selected venture. During the first two weeks of the semester, students form teams, are matched with client projects, and receive training in project management, research methods, consultation strategies, and team collaboration. This hands-on experience aims to allow students to tackle actual business challenges, providing valuable insights and practical skills that prepare them for post-graduation careers.
The Senior Experience program emphasizes critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective communication, all within a collaborative, team-based environment. It reflects the CoBA’s commitment to producing graduates who are not only academically prepared but also professionally equipped to contribute meaningfully to a diverse business setting. This curriculum encourages students to consider ethical, social, financial, technical, and global issues as they develop innovative solutions for their partnered organization. By the end of the semester, students present their findings and recommendations, often leaving a lasting impact on the businesses they consult. This capstone project is a hallmark of CSUSM’s business program, offering students a bridge between academic learning and professional application.
[Data curated from https://catalog.csusm.edu]
My Personal Project Experience
The “Forming” of the Teams
During my final semester of study, students in our class were grouped into teams. Some of these teams were created based on familiarity or friendships, while others were built on necessity. You see, everyone needed to be on a team, and we knew that many individuals would be high performers, and some may need to be dragged along, through the process. Subsequently our class familiarized ourselves with each other and a hierarchy was formed and roles were defined within our teams.
Some team members were found to be documentation experts, others were research gurus, and then there were the organizational relationship specialists. I just so happened to fit into the each of these categories well and then rose to become our team leader. My goal in this role was to not be outdone, and I was certainly not going to leave an excellent result (grade) to chance. This will come in to play later in this blog and a subsequent one regarding avoiding procrastination…
Our Team Construction
The group of five that made up our team included four that knew each other from previous courses and one that was new to us. It was what we believed to be the second strongest team in the class, and our vision was to do that well or better during the final grading.
The “Storming” related to Project Selection
The available projects for that grading period were vast and outnumbered the total teams in the class. This abundance of projects was a benefit for the class as it meant we could be discerning with our final selection. It was also beneficial because since those remaining and unselected projects would pour over to future senior project classes during that and future semesters.
With some of the projects being connected to small non-profits and others working with large multinational organizations. The options available to our class were not limited or restricted to a small number of verticals. Here are several examples projects (from my memory, which may have faded over time) that CSUSM business students have completed over the years, showcasing the diversity and real-world relevance of the program:
- Stone Brewing Company – Students worked on a market expansion strategy, helping the company identify new customer segments and develop a digital marketing plan to increase brand visibility.
- San Diego Humane Society – A team developed a donor engagement and retention strategy, including a CRM analysis and recommendations for improving communication with supporters.
- North County Health Services – Students conducted a workflow analysis to improve patient intake efficiency and reduce wait times at several clinic locations.
- TaylorMade Golf – A project focused on analyzing customer feedback and sales data to recommend improvements to their e-commerce platform and customer service experience.
- City of San Marcos – A team created a community outreach plan to increase participation in local government programs, including social media strategies and event planning.
- Sparkify App Development – A student team collaborated with a local entrepreneur to design and market a networking app that connects users based on shared interests, helping with branding, user interface feedback, and go-to-market strategy.
- Boys & Girls Club of San Marcos – Students developed a volunteer recruitment and training program to support the organization’s growing after-school initiatives.
- Thermo Fisher Scientific – A project involved supply chain optimization, where students analyzed logistics data and proposed cost-saving measures for inventory management.
- Qualcomm – Needed a strategy, policy, and process for managing and preserving legacy digital files that contained intellectual property (IP).
Our Assigned Project
Now there was a bit of a rush to get “the one we want” before another team put their names down on the tracking sheet. This process truly felt more like a silent auction than it did a university assignment which added to the thrill. There was a chance that many of the projects would be desired by more than one team and that meant we needed to be first on the list and show as much promise as we could. This was to ensure that the instructor would show us some preference in the event of some sort of a tie.
We ended up with the Qualcomm project, listed above, who was then (and is now) a global leader in wireless technologies. Qualcomm, at the time, was the largest private employer in San Diego with ~12,000 employees in San Diego and ~20,000 worldwide. The challenge presented to our student team was both technical and legal in nature:
Qualcomm needed a strategy, policy, and process for managing and preserving legacy digital files that contained intellectual property (IP).
This IP included patents, legal documentation, proprietary designs, marketing material, HR paperwork, and various internal communications. These files, some dating back to day-one of Qualcomm, were stored across various outdated formats, platforms, devices, and systems. The concern for Qualcomm was if they ever faced a legal dispute over patent infringement or theft, they needed to ensure that these legacy documents remained readily accessible, dependably readable, and ultimately legally admissible in court.
If the company ever needed to defend its IP in court, it had to ensure that these documents related to this project were not only retrievable but also authentic, intact, and admissible. The challenge wasn’t just about recovering old files; it was about preserving the digital DNA of the company in a way that could stand up to scrutiny in a modern legal and technological environment.
Project Challenge
A major challenge for this project was how and where the files were stored. Some of this content dated back to before 1985 and included a patchwork of evolving technologies, many of which now seem almost prehistoric. There was an occasional file stored on 9-inch floppy disks, which were massive, fragile, and could hold only an extremely tiny amount of data by today’s standards. These were followed by the more familiar 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch floppies, each of which were only slightly better regarding durability and capacity.
The organization also relied on magnetic (reel-to-reel) tapes and gigantic hard drives, some the size of a shoebox, that could store a mere forty megabytes of data. To put that in perspective, that’s less than the size of a single high-resolution photo taken in 2025. These drives were loud, slow, and prone to failure, but they were cutting-edge at the time the original files were generated. Many companies, including Qualcomm, also utilized proprietary systems and file formats, often tied to software that was discontinued or unsupported within a few years.
By 2000 and beyond, these legacy storage methods had become a serious liability. The physical media had begun to degrade, and the hardware required to read them was either obsolete or nearly impossible to find. Worse still, many of the files were stored in formats that modern software couldn’t interpret, making them unreadable without specialized applications or emulators.
The “Norming” with our Partner Organization
Once our team had reviewed and selected the Qualcomm project, we entered the “norming” phase. This is when roles solidified, expectations were clarified, and our relationship with the partner organization began to take shape. This stage was critical, as it laid the groundwork for how we would function both on campus as a team and externally with Qualcomm’s representatives.
Now it was time for us to be paired with the organization in-person, Qualcomm. During that initial meeting, we were introduced to our point of contact, a senior member on Qualcomm’s legal team. (I am leaving names and titles out of this document to protect the innocent.) She outlined the scope of the project, emphasizing the importance of preserving legacy files that contained sensitive intellectual property. The meeting also included introductions to our ongoing project contacts from Qualcomm’s Document Control and IT departments. These ongoing contacts would stand as our day to connections and would accept our feedback along with the final project deliverables.
We went on to ask questions, took notes, and began to understand the magnitude of the challenge ahead of us. The professionalism of the environment immediately set the tone: this wasn’t just a student exercise—it was a real consulting engagement—that we were not going to bill for. We were going to generate a result that would help script our future in the business realm. You see at the time Qualcomm was also going through a huge parallel project to manually scan documents into PDF to back up the physical “paper” as well.
We established weekly check-ins with Qualcomm, shared documents with each other via email, and created a timeline with milestones to keep us on track. This phase was where our team truly began to gel and when trust was built between team members. Interaction even continued to improve as we progressed, and we started operating like a cohesive unit with a shared mission and vision for results. This was the phase of the assignment where my Project Management passion was ignited, which ultimately led me to become PMP certified.
The “Performing” of our Team
Back within our team, we began to norm around our individual strengths. While one member took the lead on technical research, another focused on legal documentation standards, and others handled project coordination along with partner communications. As team lead, I worked to ensure that everyone felt empowered and accountable while creating standards for our work results. We were going to create an extensive term paper in Word .DOC format and a slide deck in PowerPoint .PPT format. These would be delivered to both Qualcomm and our instructor at the end of the semester.
Getting into the Weeds of the Project
Our team approached the project by first conducting a comprehensive audit of Qualcomm’s archival systems. They identified file types at risk of obsolescence, assessed metadata integrity, and evaluated the compatibility of legacy formats with modern software. We were even introduced to the fact that this content we were working with was spread across at least five locations and behind lock-and-key. This meant were required to travel around San Diego County to ‘see’ the content and often get approval by badged security to proceed in the facility.
The team then researched best practices in digital preservation, including file migration strategies, metadata tagging, and secure storage solutions. We had a vision for the final deliverable to include a multi-phase plan for digitizing and cataloging critical IP-related documents, along with recommendations for implementing a long-term digital preservation policy. The project not only was going to address Qualcomm’s immediate concerns but also lay-out the groundwork for scalable document management practices that could be adopted companywide.
Troubles Ahead did not Mean we were Lost Altogether
As our team settled into this performing phase, we gained momentum by diving deep into research, refining our deliverables, and coordinating our findings into a cohesive strategy. However, just as we began to rely more heavily on Qualcomm for validation and feedback, our main point of contact started to become increasingly unavailable and unresponsive. Emails went unanswered, scheduled check-ins were postponed or missed entirely, and the once-clear communication channel began to feel like a void. This sudden shift created confusion and a sense of disorientation within our team. We had built our workflow around regular input from Qualcomm, and without it, we found ourselves second-guessing decisions and assumptions. The lack of guidance made it difficult to confirm whether our recommendations aligned with the company’s expectations or operational realities.
This breakdown in communication had a direct impact on our confidence in our final deliverables. Without consistent feedback, in the final weeks of the project, we were unable to validate all aspects of our proposed strategy and process, particularly the technical feasibility of certain archival solutions and the legal implications of the suggested metadata handling.
Most significantly, we never received a formal thumbs-up on our final report before it was due to be submitted to our professor. While we had done our best to ensure the report was thorough and professional, the absence of client confirmation left us uncertain about how it would be received at Qualcomm and by our instructor. This experience was a tough lesson in real-world consulting: sometimes, even with strong effort and planning, external factors can disrupt the process. Still, we pressed forward, relying on our internal team cohesion and commitment to excellence to carry the project across the finish line.
The “Adjourning” of the Project, Course, and our Senior Year
As the semester drew to a close, our team entered the “adjourning” phase to this experience. Since, this would be the final chapter of our senior experience journey with our deliverables complete, and our final presentation scheduled. We shifted our focus from execution to reflection as the culmination of months of research, collaboration, and problem-solving was distilled into a professional-grade report and presentation. These deliverables, being in document and slide deck form, created for a formal presentation to Qualcomm’s leadership team along with our class and instructor.
Final Presentation
We walked into the classroom that day to present not as students, but consultants that were armed with data, recommendations, and a clarified roadmap for preserving Qualcomm’s legacy intellectual property. The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive from our instructor and many at Qualcomm appreciated the depth of our analysis and the practicality of our proposed solutions. It was a proud moment, for the team and I, knowing that our work could have somewhat of a lasting impact on a company of such global magnitude.
Final Thoughts
Beyond the venture itself, the adjourning phase marked the end of our academic careers and the beginning of our professional lives. The senior experience had not only tested our business acumen but also forged lasting friendships and professional connections. We celebrated the completion of the course with a sense of accomplishment and a touch of nostalgia.
For me personally, this project ignited a passion for project management that would shape my career path. I would later pursue and earn my PMP certification, a direct result of the skills and confidence gained during this experience. As we packed up our binders, archived our files, and said goodbye to our teammates, we knew we were leaving CSUSM not just with a degree, but with a real-world experience that had prepared us to step into the business world with clarity, purpose, and momentum.