Infusing Entrepreneurship Throughout the Curriculum

Our Agenda

Thursday August 2 9.30am

1. Introducing the Evergreen Entrepreneur – Scott Morgan Evergreen (5 Minutes)
   Introducing the Mondragon Entrepreneur – Joanes (5 Minutes)
2. Check-In – Ane Beitia Salaberria Mondragon University (10 minutes)

Activity – Envision what would evergreen be like if every evergreen student took action about the issues they cared about. (Groups of 5 -6 people large post-its for discussion at end, one sentence.)

1. Proposed Working Session Definition of Entrepreneurship and Evergreen Branding/Policy on Entrepreneurship Dion Gouws Scott Morgan, Laurance Geri and David McAvity
2. Session 1 Reflections of student Entrepreneurs Awakening the Passion

Workshop (Level 1 pathway) (45 Minutes) – Awakening the passion Astghik Zakharyan

• • Lillian Adams – Evergreen Agriculture
  • Valeria Lucia Valverde Camacho – Mondragon University
  • Cameron Hoadley – Evergreen

Activity Resources Small Post Its, Roll of brown/white paper (sheets), Pins, Markers.

Questions for session:

• • What are your passions
  • How would your life be different if you followed your passion
  • What can make students more confident to take action based on their passion
• Report back session 1 – (15 Minutes) How will we at Evergreen Awaken student passions (specific class activities), who will be involved (interested faculty) and Mondragon University involvement Fall semester.
• An example of Evergreen infusing entrepreneurship in an interdisciplinary fashion – Entrepreneurial Endeavors (Proposed Level I business pathway) Dion Gouws – Evergreen.
• Workshop Session 2 (Level A Pathway) (45 Minutes) – Learning the Enterprise as a tool to following your passion. Take your passion from Session 1 and translate into a implementation plan – Dion Gouws

Reflections of student Entrepreneurs understanding the Enterprise

• • Christopher Kai Evergreen
  • Ane Beita Salaberria  Mondragon University
  • Richurd Weigand Evergreen

Questions for session:

• • How do we turn our students into leaders
  • How do we gauge and measure the development of the enterprise
  • How do we learn and grow together
• Report Back Session 2 –  How will we at Evergreen equip students with tools necessary to implement their plans (specific class activities), who is involved (interested faculty) and Mondragon University involvement Fall semester ?
• The business pathways Intermediate Level consideration to support understanding the enterprise being learned at Evergreen. Proposed preparation a professional management (CMA designation/certification) Dion Gouws – Evergreen
• Workshop Session 3 (45 minutes) – How will you use the resources and Facilities at Evergreen  to create opportunities for entrepreneurs (utilized or under-utilized) what is needed and how can we adapt these for students to utilize so as to develop enterprises around these.

Reflections of student Entrepreneurs utilizing existing resources in their business plans. Evergreen supporting startups. Two existing proposals.

• • Nataly Salguero Evergreen
  • John Beck Evergreen

Questions for session:

• • What learning spaces are available at Evergreen that enterprises also utilize, Example Theater, Flaming Eggplant, Television Studio’s, Woodshop, Art Galleries and what is needed.
  • What life coaching is available at Evergreen (Examples: Career Services, Reading and Writing, Media Services etc.) and what is needed.
  • What community resources are available to Evergreen (Alumni…….etc.) and what is needed.
• Report Back Session 3
• The Mondragon Experience Julen Rodriguez
• Evergreen and Mondragon Entrepreneurs to summarize a proposed way forward gleaned from workshop sessions. Commitments in teams (45 Minutes).
• Evergreen Olympia and Evergreen Tacoma Interface – Anthony Zaragoza
• Reflections from the Evergreen Administration and Deans – Laurance Geri and David McAvity, Scott Morgan Entrepreneurship and Edwin Bliss Career Services.
• Checkout led by Mondragon University Pablo Gaztelu.

 

Entrepreneurship education in Finland

 

Entrepreneurship is the individual’s ability to translate ideas into action. It encompasses creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and direct action towards the achievement of goals. These qualities support everyday life in education, at work, in leisure activities and in other societal activities. These qualities are needed in entrepreneurship, but they also enhance workers’ awareness of their work and help them seize opportunities.

OUR ACTIONS EVERGREEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP, INNOVATION AND BUSINESS LEADERSHIP DEGREE PATHWAY

INFUSING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AT EVERGREEN

Draft of Summer Institute’s Recapitulation and Reflections

VISIONS:

At Evergreen, our learning model inspires students to become entrepreneurs, serve the community, and develop new ways to meet challenges in any arena they choose – from business and education, to healthcare, the arts, and the environment. We emphasize collaborative, interdisciplinary learning across significant differences, supporting and benefitting from local and global commitments to social justice, diversity, environmental stewardship and service in the public interest.

By infusing entrepreneurship at Evergreen, we envision our student body to be leaders of the communities, while staying interconnected and aligned with the different agents that are part of the local ecosystem. We are perceived as doers, empowered to change the world, and examples of sustainability. Our actions are also visible and tangible. We are able to turn problems into opportunities through cooperation and teamwork, starting enterprises within the school. Our connections and care about the issues that surround us create value for others; we build community relationships meaningfully. We are also experts at navigating tensions and deeply introspective.

We are the place where eager minds learn to create our ever-changing world. We create chaos with purpose.

DEFINITION: Entrepreneurship is the translation of interdisciplinary learning to purposeful practical living. It’s our ability to translate ideas into action. It encompasses creativity, innovation and risk-taking, as well as the ability to plan and direct action towards the achievement of goals.

At Evergreen, these goals are defined within the frame of our values and ethos.

SESSION 1: Awakening your passions

Discovering and awakening one’s passion/ideas is a life-long process of creating connections and identifying what value can we bring to our community. Building this connections is a process of reflection.

By introducing into the existing curriculum a system that would encourage self-reflection and search within the students, Evergreen could pave the way for its students to start working on awakening and identifying their passions. This could be done in the following manner: “What is your path?” workshop as part of the annual Academic Statement process:

• Use of the tool known as Learning Compass, by answering the following questions:
  • Where have I been? Where am I now? Where do I want to go? How am I going to get there? How will I know when I’ve arrived?
• The workshop itself, would follow this or a similar process:
  • Reflecting on where one sees themself in this field of study (in essay format?).
  • What are your strengths and weaknesses?
  • If you had to focus on and develop yourself this field for a year, what would you do?
  • How would you make a living out of doing that? Do some hands-on research.
  • Identify opportunities for independent scholarships.
  • Develop a pitch (through the use of speaker-listener dynamic).
  • Practice, get feedback, and evolve your pitch by presenting it to your peers and professors.

We propose this phase to be integrated into the different disciplines because we believe that every human being is different and must therefore find their chosen path within themselves. This is why we encourage every discipline to foster and promote the time and space for each student to go through this self-discovering journey. We are confident that our faculty members are the ideal guides for this phase, as they are the ones who hold the most wholesome knowledge and understanding of each discipline. They are the ones with the references of the field’s role models or influencers, specialized niches, and skills necessary; they are aware and most connected to the problems needing to be solved, and of potential ways to approach those.

Other proposed elements to cultivate passions:

• Integrating health and wellbeing.
• Active listening spaces.
• More interaction and communication spaces/informal meeting spaces.

Other supporting activities could include:

• Creating a space where students from all over campus can come together and experiment.
• Introducing faculty workshops to create and encourage spaces to share best practices and learning from each other.
• Taking students to field trips, conferences and network-creating events.
• Organizing student-initiated events, workshops.
• Finding coach/mentor figures for support (faculty, alumni).

The following are some conditions/resources/learnings needed to discover one’s passions: intersecting knowledge, risk-taking, design process, intention and patience, self-love and love for others, self-trust and trust on others, having partners in learning journey, developing models of innovation, team dynamics and skill sets, exploration in supportive environment, networking for feedback, growth mindset and understanding of failure as a learning.

SESSION 2: Learning the Enterprise as a tool to follow your passion:

Session 2 is all about getting and experiencing the necessary skill set to turn that idea/passion into reality. There are two main intersecting paths to get there:

• Integrating business, leadership and managerial skills into other disciplines’ programs, e.g. Practice of Sustainable Agriculture.
• Creating a business pathway that is focused on offering and working on tangible business skills that students can then take back and apply in their chosen fields of study, e.g. Hands On Entrepreneurship.

The first instance seeks to introduce managerial and leadership skills to the students and the understanding of how these “business” (term to be reviewed) skills will not only support but optimize their projected impact into their fields of action.

In the second instance, there is a proposal to develop a 12+4 credit program. The importance of introducing external elements was emphasized; from combining lecture series with programs with guest speakers, to interacting with local organizations was found to be a key ingredient of curating a successful entrepreneurial core program. This program would kick off with a pitching event, in which the students would pitch their self-identified ideas/passions and ways forward to their peers. Depending on interests, motivations, and skill sets, core project teams would be created. These would be assigned a coach/advisor (different from the faculty), to support the program’s process.

We believe that the key to this specialization phase is the teamwork and collaboration between different faculty members. There are technical skills that would be perfected with the support and guidance of Business faculty (sales plan, bootstrapping, cost analysis, accounting, pitching, entity types), while the application of these newly acquired skills into the students’ own disciplines would be supported by their discipline’s faculty (why do the skills acquired matter and how can they be implemented?).

Ultimately, the strategic cooperation of multidisciplinary faculty would bring a wholesome awareness of the fundamentals and specific skill set each student-preneur requires.

Other supporting activities/practices could include:

• Continuing with faculty workshops to share and introduce new best practices.
• In-Class Panels with career/academic advising and alumni.
• Integrating rotating leadership roles/positions.
• Introducing self-leadership, personal financing, and self-accountability skills.
• Faculty acknowledged their and others’ fields of expertise and are able to refer students to other faculty member or co-curricular opportunities.

SESSION 3: How will you use the resources and facilities at Evergreen to create opportunities for entrepreneurs?

We will introduce different spaces throughout the campus focused on the different disciplines offered throughout the curriculum, presented as incubation spaces, in which students or groups of students will find reference points and guidance towards realizing their passions and ideas in their specific fields of study (such as the Creative Arts Incubator). We also pictured a common co-working-like inspirational space, to which student-preneurs could refer to as center of entrepreneurship on campus. This space would be designed in a way which would encourage and promote dialogues and discussions that would support the student-preneurs desires for progress in their projects. The new knowledge and insights acquired in this common reference space, could then be taken to the discipline-specific incubation spaces to specialize and perfect the skills.

This common space would ideally also work as a socializing focus point, in which events, workshops, conferences, pitching sessions, and many other entrepreneurship-promoting activities could be held.

List of spaces available:

• Organic Farm
• FLEGG
• Community Gardens
• Labs+Greenhouses
• Farmhouse+SAL
• 4300 Kitchen
• Student Activities
• CCBLA
• Entrepreneurship Program
• Business+Innovation @ SPSCC
• Writing+QUASR
• Computing
• Library
• Vet Center
• SASS (Career, internship, advising)
• IR
• Grants
• Foundation
• Beaches
• Dorms
• The Outdoor Program
• Longhouse
• Health Clinic
• Childcare
• Light Lounge
• Purse Hall
• Library Meadow
• Lobby
• 4300 Basement
• Motor Pool
• Bike Shop
• Metal Shop
• Woodshop
• Screenprint
• TV Studio (CCAM)
• Theater
• Dance Studios
• Gallery
• Media Services
• Photo Lab
• COMM Building
• Carving+Fiber Arts
• Ceramics
• Makerspace
• Kaos Radio
• CPJ
• Neon Lab
• Tacoma Campus
• SOS Model
• Alumni Network
• Internships on Campus
• Campus Leader/Director
• Career/Student Group
• Clubs
• Orientation for New Students

How do we use these spaces? Different options exist:

• We can integrate the different spaces into curriculum.
• We can allow for students’ projects to be developed there (with the necessary preparations and permissions).
• We can market them to the region or larger community.

TACOMA INTERFACE:

The Evergreen Tacoma campus works on integrating elements of social justice with entrepreneurial mindset and initiatives.

There are also 3 student-identified needs/opportunities to have entrepreneurial startups on campus:

• No food resources.
• Children into classrooms/daycare center.
• Bookstore and gear.

NEXT STEPS:

• Creating a Team of Teams to lead the process, integrated by members of Faculty, Students, Staff and Mondragon.
• Developing and defining some of the aspects and worries raised in the Institute, e.g.:
  • Writing out the Leading Thoughts of Entrepreneurship at Evergreen and clarifying what are the “goals” the institution promotes, as to building a common description of what an Evergreen Entrepreneur is.
  • Further understanding and developing Evergreen Tacoma’s entrepreneurial spirit and initiatives, and integrating both campuses into this process.

It is vital to co-create and design the entrepreneurial interface at Evergreen with representation from all of the different agents involved in this process (students, faculty, staff, Mondragon) while adapting the knowledge and resources and making them our own (terminology, dynamics, structures).

TEAM OF TEAMS:

Our student Entrepreneurs form Abora, Mondragon University are the driving force behind the design of this Evergreen Entrepreneurship program. This is historically how our Evergreen programs have been designed. This website documents our Program design progress and design activities.

 

Gilda Sheppard

Ane Beitia

David McAvity

Lillian Adams

Cameron Hoadley

Marja Eloheimo (Community Herbalism Incubator for Fall)

Thea Pan

Chris Kai

John Beck

Nataly Salguero

Martha Rosemeyer

Martin Fernández de Labastida

Julen Rodríguez

Valeria Valverde

Pablo Gaztelu

Dion Gouws

David Meuhlesen

Scott Morgan

list not complete