Ask college students what one of their least favorite parts of living on their own at Quinnipiac is and one answer that comes back frequently is doing their own laundry.

Students have to find their way to laundry rooms and hope that there is an open washer or dryer. Once they’ve loaded their laundry, the student must be sure to return to the machine as soon as the cycle is finished to ensure another student doesn’t remove their load.

Lucky for Quinnipiac students, some members of Professor Robert Halliday’s Management 210 class are aiming to put an end to this predicament by launching their own laundry service, Kollege Kleaners.

“We wanted to make a cheap and easy way for students to get their laundry done,” sophomore group member Jacquelyn Fiske said.

For $15, a student will get his or her clothes picked up, washed, dried and then delivered back to their rooms. The group will also take care of any other special instructions students have for their clothes. In addition, each time the service is used, the person will be given a free t-shirt and be entered into a drawing to win a new iPod Nano. All the proceeds will go to a non-profit organization called Partnerships, Adult Day Care Center Inc. that is located in Hamden.

To alert students of the new service, Kollege Kleaners sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing their service. However, the responses were not all they had anticipated.

“We didn’t receive as many responses as we would have liked,” Fiske said. “The e-mail’s appearance and the idea of strangers doing people’s laundry might have scared a lot of people off.”

The five group members meet and work together on the project each class. They are aided by two independent Star Team consultants who sit in on meetings and give reports to the group on how the group is doing and what they can do to improve their performance.

The class is conducted with students meeting with fellow group members rather than being lectured. The free-form style of the class has come as a welcome change to some students.

“Some classes, you’ll go to, study for a test and forget what you learned within a month,” senior Jesse Van Nostrand said. “In this class you’re learning by doing.”

That is precisely the kind of class Halliday wants to create.

“In my 38 years, I’ve seen that there is a lot of untapped potential in the business program at Quinnipiac,” Halliday said. “Through cognitive application, the students come to realize that they are capable of doing high level work.”

According to Halliday, in order for the students to work at a high level, it is imperative that they come together as a team. This is the real purpose of the class.

“The objective of the class is for the students to learn how to work together as a team. If the students learn how to work together, then hopefully successes in their business will come, too,” Halliday said.

The students routinely do exercises in class designed to improve their communications skills. Fiske noted that these exercises not only help her efforts in the Kollege Kleaner project but also in her everyday life.

“At first, I had a hard time letting people know my opinion, but as the class has gone on I’ve seen an improvement in my ability to communicate my opinions,” Fiske said.

These improvements in communication and knowledge have made the project rewarding to those who have participated.

“Even though it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of fun learning how to operate a business in real life,” Van Nostrand said.

Kollege Kleaners began its laundry service Nov. 5. Anyone interested in the service is asked to contact the group members at [email protected].