Coffee Shop to College: Senior Dawson Ainslie chose his major in finance by working in the coffee shop

From running lemonade stands to mowing lawns, senior Dawson Ainslie has always been interested in money and wanted to work with it. So, with his lemonade stand experience and skills he learned in marketing classes, he initially decided to major in business.

After Ainslie started taking business classes in high school, such as Introduction to Business and many of the available courses in marketing, he began narrowing down his college major choices from just broad business to finance before he joined Columbia Brew — the student-run coffee shop at SM East.

“I was between accounting and finance, and I just felt that after college, you’re able to do more with a finance degree,” Ainslie said. “So that’s why I chose finance, and I think I decided within the last year.”

In February of his junior year, Ainslie was accepted into the coffee shop. He applied for the finance and sales teams, then got both of those jobs. He would be working on the finance teams throughout first semester of his senior year, then sales second semester.

“Finance was my number one choice, and I got that first semester, and it’s super cool,” Ainslie said. “We were in charge of handling all the transactions and tracking everything. All of our revenue and all of our expenses, and we had this giant spreadsheet that kind of tracked all of that.”

When Ainslie was chosen for the finance team, he was eager to get started because of his interest in money, and he’d finally be able to apply his skills in a brand new setting.

The marketing and business teachers at East, Amanda Doane and Mercedes Rasmussen hope the coffee shop and student store allow kids to work with different interests and skills that they might use later on in business, like finance.

“[The kids] get an opportunity to really dive into those areas of management and business areas and do them hands-on, instead of just lecture,” Rasmussen said. “[They are] coming up with an idea, they actually get to do those ideas, and see if they work or not. And so those classes make it great, because kids get the opportunity to test their ideas and see if they’re successful.”

Even with coffee shop teacher Doane there to help students out with any problems, most of the responsibility is put on the students, according to Ainslie. This contributes to better problem-solving skills and being able to figure things out collaboratively with other team members, according to Rasmussen.

According to Ainslie, Columbia Brew gives students real-world experience of business practices, and he would recommend anyone who’s interested in business to at least interview for the coffee shop.

“If it didn’t have to do with business, I would say that it was a super cool experience,” Ainslie said. “Just interacting with people that I wouldn’t normally interact with.”