2014_11_21 vantage week 12 update

VANTAGE year 2, week 12 update: "watch what you
eat and move your feet"
There was an entrepreneurial feel to the week at VANTAGE with two major local start
up experts teaching business and analytics students while the health care students
visited the global headquarters of one of the world's leading medical device companies
which started up as a medical device repair shop in 1949.
The global Business class started off the week with Peter Taunton, founder and Chief
Executive of Lift Brands coming in to talk about the entrepreneurial process and how he
built a health exercise portfolio of brands into over 1,000 clubs worldwide. He had a
strong focus on the importance of customer service and advised "never to grow
your company at a rate where you compromise the customer experience." Tuesday saw
Doug Berg, founder and Chief Tracker of Trackif.com visit us to teach about startups in
the internet sector. His personal story since graduating from MHS and his comments
about succeeding in the internet space resonated with our students. He emphasized
the technique of creating a sense of limited opportunities for your product in order to
create urgency. Chidam Chidambaram, CMO of Bluestem Brands came back for a third
visit to teach the students about projected P&L creation and NPV analysis.
The Health Care and Sports Science students visited Medtronic global headquarters on
Wednesday and we have many great pictures from that day below. Whilst at Medtronic,
they did a walking tour of the facility. They then conducted a
demonstration of brain modulation as a treatment for Parkinson's disease where
students had an opportunity to operate a functional MRI machine. Students conducted
spinal cord simulation where they practiced inserting leads into the spinal column and
undertook tens stimulation on themselves. On Friday, Charreise Vincent came to talk
about her role as a combat lifesaver during her tours in Afghanistan and the health care
associated with that role. She also covered traumatic brain injury and post traumatic
stress disorder and pulled in some of her own experiences.
Our analytics students joined up with our business students to learn about projected
P&L construction and NPV analysis. The week ended with guest instruction from Kelly
Heikkila of Kinetic Data who spoke about transient data and data visualization. He also
told us that "Coding is King".
We also hosted our friends from CAPS in Kansas City, a school that pioneered the
professional learning experience for high school students provided us with lots of help
and advice in setting up VANTAGE. Corey Mohn, Executive Director of CAPS, Scott
Kreshel, Program Development Specialist, and Tonya Merrigan, Executive Director of
Curriculum and Instruction spend Friday with us.
Lots of pictures below!
Best wishes
The VANTAGE TEAM
Chidam Chidambaram, CMO of Bluestem Brands, teaching on NPV and P&L projections
Scott Kreshel from the CAPS school in Kansas City talking to the Global Business students about the ideation
process using the Stanford design thinking method.
Various pictures from our visit to Medtronic World Headquarters: