Examining a Community-Centered Approach to Entrepreneurship Education and Providing a Blueprint for Future Programs by UConn
Presented By Jennifer Mathieu, Rory McGloin, Michaela Hartl, and Alycia Chrosniak
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- Build partnerships with existing companies in the ecosystem
- Built an insure-tech incubator to connect large insurance companies with startups
- Internships are one part of it
- Marketing and recruiting students
- Open to undergrad and grad students across all campuses and majors
- Started ambiguously to learn about Hartford, identify problems,
- Started with the storytelling of Hartford – glory days – historic buildings
- Storytelling of businesses and new opportunities
- IDEA: Social media storytelling for companies recruiting interns
- IDEA: Market industries with related startups available for students
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- Program
- Design a course that intersects students + community of Hartford
- Different backgrounds means a lack of a shared vernacular
- Iterative design
- Let the students write their own course by telling us what they think they want to do, and we will guide you on that path
- What’s unique about the program?
- Enter/exit interviews gathered data and tangible insights
- Program
- IDEA: questions for end-of-program survey
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- What did you expect to learn?
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- What did you actually learn?
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- What would have been helpful to have in the course?
- Collaborative approach to building what the program looks like with key stakeholders, instructional team
- Largest challenge
- Faculty and Curriculum
- How do we get the credits out and assess this amazing course?
- Needs a deliverable
- How do you grade a student’s ability to go out into the community and listen?
- Go out in the community to listen to business owners
- Overinflate those final projects
- Curriculum design – need to assess – figure out where we are going
- How do we measure some of these things?
- Entrepreneurial Mindset Assessment
- Before and after the course
- Makes their growth mandatory
- Key takeaways?
- Interdisciplinary is key
- Core of what we do is a foundational opportunity for education and entrepreneurship
- We teach people the skills and mindset of an entrepreneur
- Hope it translates into whatever their career will be
- City takeaways?
- Young people are invested in the city
- Book – Startup Communities by Brad Feld
- Great part of the curriculum
- Describes all the stakeholders involved
- Universities cannot be the #1 driver of an entrepreneurial ecosystem
- It is the entrepreneurs and business builders who drive it
- Leverage where the university sits in the ecosystem
- Don’t try to come in and rescue
- Not “how can I help you?
- Come in and listen empathetically
- Ask what do your students do after listening empathetically
- Deliverables
- First cohort of UConn students did not represent the community of Hartford
- Talk early on about solutions or strategies that do NOT utilize university resources
- How or where should other universities begin implementing this type of program?
- Here to connect your university in to your ecosystem
- Core elements
- What do we teach our entrepreneurs?
- Customer discovery to go out and ask questions
- Be critical of what you are hearing
- Go out and understand where best the need is and what challenges are being faced
- Starting assessment
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
- In the ecosystem
- Are there other organizations that are doing work looking at the themes?
- What do we teach our entrepreneurs?
- You will need allies and advocates from multiple perspectives
- Our relationship with the mayor of Hartford
- Policymakers in the state
- Federal money like COVID-related relief
- How can we get a piece of that $50M to support the program?
- Can I get an officer to be dedicated to this mission?
- Donors
- Our relationship with the mayor of Hartford
- Students reported that it would be integral to work with corporate sponsorship
- Manufacturing and insurance ecosystem
- How do we work with Raytheon and other huge companies?
- Gap between large and small businesses
- Q&A
- Corporate partners’ engagement?
- Mentorship?
- Economic development
- How do we get entrepreneurship spread to other professors?
- That’s the core of all our problems…silos in our organizations
- Students went to small businesses and were much more welcomed by business owners, who became teachers to pass along knowledge to students
- Use students as ambassadors in the community
- Students identified barber shop needs social media marketing