The University of Minnesota’s Carlson Impact Lab provides students with opportunities to work with real clients and collaborate with peers.

The Impact Lab launched in fall 2022 as a part of the newly required Carlson School of Management undergraduate curriculum, which includes two courses. In 2023, the Impact Lab partnered with Special Olympics Minnesota to help prepare them for the Special Olympics Games, which will be coming to Minneapolis in June 2026.

Students take a problem-solving class in their first year where they learn basic skills, according to Amee McDonald, the Impact Lab’s managing director. The students then apply those skills in the Impact Lab, also known as the “in-action class,” during their second year.

“In the in-action class, students are empowered to identify and analyze complex problems for a client,” McDonald said. “Within that, they are empowered to identify which frameworks to use and how to approach it.” 

In the Impact Lab, students have business professionals as mentors who make sure the students are addressing the right problems, McDonald said. 

Last fall, the Impact Lab collaborated with Special Olympics Minnesota to help them explore how to engage Minnesotans before, during and after the Special Olympics Games, McDonald added. 

The Special Olympics Games bring in more than $75 million of economic impact to the state, according to Dave Dorn, president and CEO of Special Olympics Minnesota. 

“With the Impact Lab, we thought we could use this lead up to the games to really shine a light on the Special Olympics movement period, so more people realize the Special Olympics is for everybody, no matter what age and no matter if they have a disability or not,” Dorn said. 

Dorn said he was happy to work with University students who can help build a better, healthier, more inclusive community across the board. 

McDonald said students conduct research in groups, create prototype solutions, get feedback from clients and stakeholders, then finalize their solutions and build instructions for the client.

“The purpose really is to be of service to others, and in that process, the students are having to navigate ambiguity,” McDonald said. “They’re having to figure out where their skill deficits are and how they can motivate themselves to learn the skills or partner with individuals who can help them.” 

Trenton Knutson, a third-year student who participated in the Lab, said his group focused on creating a social media strategy for Special Olympics Minnesota to engage 18- to 22-year-olds with the games. 

“We ended up deciding TikTok because you can really target your segments a lot more there,” Knutson said. “You can target demographics, specific regions, you can hashtag stuff and it is more likely to be picked up in the feed of people searching that topic.” 

Knutson said his team came up with a three-part plan, which included what the current social media manager and volunteers at Special Olympics Minnesota should be doing, when to implement it and steps to create effective, engaging TikToks.

“We wanted to make it easy for them to copy what we were suggesting, so in our plan, we had links to certain trends at the time, and we found a website to give them that was constantly updating what the current trends are,” Knutson said. 

Rachel Secrist, a third-year student who participated in the Impact Lab, said her group focused on reaching out to athletes from the University and having them work as volunteers when the games came to Minnesota. 

“One of our main challenges was figuring out what we were really doing because the class is not structured as ‘here’s a problem, now solve it,’” Secrist said. “It is more like there is no problem until you find it, so we spent a lot of time figuring out the problem we wanted to focus on and narrowing it down.” 

McDonald said it is uncomfortable for students at first because there is no right answer or structure for each week.

“When I say the students have to identify, analyze and address complex situations, I really mean it,” Mcdonald said. “They are the ones doing the work, figuring out the methodology and gathering the resources. We are there to facilitate the process and intervene if it goes off the rails. 

McDonald said the client is involved throughout the process, hearing about the research and giving feedback at every point. 

“I think the experience is invaluable,” Knutson said. “When you learn in a class, you’re learning a subject, you take a test on it, then you move on. However, in the Impact Lab, these are real clients, and everything we are doing has a real impact on them.”