Shoring Up Their Education

The UC Irvine business students stood bickering over their construction project.

Who is going to shovel? How much water do we need? How much will extra supplies cost? Can we stop talking and start building?

With only 10 minutes left in their strategy session to make these decisions, the tension increased.

“Nobody listens to me,” said 28-year-old Payul Shahpatel of Brea. “It’s just like my wife.”

It all seemed too technical for a simple sandcastle, but this wasn’t a typical day at the beach.

Nearly 100 MBA students fanned out across Huntington State Beach to test their management expertise in the university’s fifth annual beach competition.

The exercise is part of an operations management course designed to teach students teamwork, organization skills and how to complete a product from start to finish.

Like cast mates on “The Apprentice,” these classmates were divided into 19 teams and given detailed instructions to build four sandcastles each for a fictitious customer.

Teams were given two hours to assign tasks, purchase equipment, develop a strategy and build the castles.

Clad in flip-flops and armed with toy shovels and small plastic buckets, the students dove in -- and swiftly discovered that building sandcastles wasn’t as easy as it looked.

From the crumbling towers and shaky castle walls, these obviously weren’t architectural students

“I thought we’d just have to build big mounds of sand. It was definitely more involved,” said Shahpatel, whose title of excavation engineer meant his job was to clear away sand piles and build bridges.

His team, Lucky 13, got off to a bumpy start, but picked up the pace after discovering a perfect combination of water-to-sand mixture that held each tower in place.

The teamwork was finally paying off for Brent Eickhoff, the team’s structural expert who was responsible for the sandcastle’s layout and making sure it didn’t tumble.

“It seems like a silly game, but now we’re starting to think things through, like ‘We didn’t do this or we need to do that’,” said Eickhoff, 36, of Anaheim Hills. “It demonstrates a real-world lesson on a smaller scale.”

Professor Reynold Byers started the competition as a way to teach students in a hands-on environment.

“I want them to see how operations management and organizational behavior work together to bring a product to market, and also have fun and take advantage of the Southern California resources -- the beach. Everyone loves the beach,” he said.

It was also a chance for students to interact with fellow classmates.

“You’re applying what you learn in class and you get to know your classmates better,” said Sepi Gazeri, 22, of Irvine. “We haven’t worked with some of these people before ... and we’re on the beach. You can’t go wrong.”

The experience gives students an advantage, said Dean Andrew Policano of the university’s Paul Merage School of Business, who presented the award afterward. Teams were judged on time and the quality of their castles.

The winning team, G2, received a cash prize of about $180 and will have their names engraved on a trophy.