I have spent 1 year and a half exploring what entrepreneurship is. Now I’m glad to announce that I finally have an entrepreneurial plan for my home campus.
For people who know me well, hands-on learning is my true passion. Short experiential workshops boost my confidence and serve as a good mentality break from academics for me, while I can still learn necessary soft skills and interaction with people.
After the Southeastern Regional Meetup in downtown Greenville last year, I have counted on the positive effects that experiential education has on students and attempted to propose an “action/actionable” class (based on the model of the IPRO program in Illinois Tech) into our curriculum. I talked to a good number of faculty members including the President, recorded and studied their feedbacks, and sought potential stakeholders for the idea.
Mr. Mike Winiski, our curriculum developer, was caught by the idea and has committed to it until now. We share the same vision to tackle the passive learning, risk-averse culture we are seeing on the curriculum. Very good news right here: his efforts were paid off by the presidential approval of the first “action” class – Design for Social Change II in May Experience Program 2016. I am now aiming to prototype trial models of the course, ideally some pop-up classes, next Spring 2016.
“Given the flexibility that pop-ups offer in terms of format, pedagogy and topics, you can create ones that tap into students’ particular passions and needs, be that learning how to use soldering equipment or 3D printers. But let’s not stop with the students! Instructors often get jazzed about sharing their own personal passions and learning alongside students by serving as a facilitator. For some instructors, that’s compensation enough.”
– Professor Joseph Tranquillo from Bucknell University.
I brought that vision to this Sullivan Social Entrepreneurship Fall Retreat with hope to gain more design thinking tools and networking strategies. After three workshops today, I totally redefined my MVP, customers, values, channels etc.
(To be continued).
samkristencan 