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For nearly a decade, the Business Core Applied Semester Experience (BASE) has been Leeds’ signature undergraduate capstone experience. It has constantly evolved based on input from employers to ensure students graduate with the skills that matter most. The result? Confident, career-ready professionals who stand out in today’s competitive job market.

A head start in business strategy

Undergraduates are often solely focused on learning business principles early on in their college career, but students at Leeds learn them and then dive right into applying them.

“BASE is a capstone experience that very few business schools offer. It gives our students a unique advantage,” said Andy Lacy, an assistant teaching professor of marketing who directs the program.

Sophomores take BASE. The course is composed of several modules, each one providing knowledge and action as pertains to actual business. Students also simulate a first-year business launch.

Hands-on assignments allow students to see how business decisions are made and presented, said Lacy. For example, the first module is on Justin’s, a natural food company based in Boulder. Students choose a new product from among five options and create a financial plan and report summarizing their recommendations, Lacy explained.

Real-world readiness

Matt Schottland (Fin, Acct’25) (pictured right), graduating this December, said that in addition to his own positive experience, he has heard other students speak favorably about BASE. “It has a reputation as being the most exciting class you get to take at Leeds,” he said. “The work you are assigned correlates really well to the work these companies would actually be performing.”

The most important thing Schottland learned in BASE was how to decide where to invest corporate funds, and which metrics would best get the job done. His class predicted the annual recurring revenue (ARR) of a new restaurant location and decided whether or not to invest in new manufacturing facilities for a bike company.

“Instead of relying on one metric, we created a holistic understanding of our decision and the tradeoffs,” he said. “This skill is one that has been really important for me in finance internships, in terms of budgeting.”

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Matt Schottland (Fin, Acct’25)

Learning how to make pro forma financial projections came in handy during Schottland’s finance internship last summer at Lockheed Martin Space. “I applied the budgeting skills I learned during BASE to ensure that spending of the billion-dollar Artemis contract stayed on schedule—and to correct for any overages,” he said.

The accounting practice was useful during his audit internship at KPMG, too. “What was specifically useful was the ability to categorize certain expenses into different parts of the financial statements,” he explained.

Schottland credits Lacy with his successes, naming him one of the best professors he has had at Leeds. “He brings a special energy and fun atmosphere to the class and shaped my experience in BASE,” he said.

BASE as a career catalyst

Alex Freimuth (Fin, Acct’18, MAcct’19), a Leeds GOLD Board member who participated in the inaugural BASE program in 2016, said the course prepared him for his current role as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), because everything in the professional world requires group collaboration.

“BASE prepared me to work and communicate with others, including those outside of my accounting and finance discipline,” Freimuth said. “I think BASE helps to also show how different areas of emphasis and disciplines in business interact, and highlights the importance of not working in silos—no matter your title,” Freimuth added.

The knowledge Schottland acquired in BASE has also been transferable to his AI-based tutoring startup, Brain Buffs, which specializes in helping students raise their SAT scores. He handles customer management, finance and development—all skills he began developing in BASE.

Schottland anticipates the work he did during BASE will be useful at his upcoming internship at Moss Adams. Being able to talk about his hands-on experiences through BASE during the internship interview process was a “clear differentiator from the other candidates and definitely contributed to my success,” he said.

Lacy noted that it’s common for students to say that BASE helped them solidify their career or major choice, or that it helped them realize they wanted to go in a different direction—useful insights to gain early on in their college careers.

“It prepares them very effectively for internships and their careers with practical, cross-disciplinary decision-making,” he added.