The Entrepreneurship Educator 

February 2015

As always, it was great to see many of you at USASBE in Tampa. Each year I come away with so many ideas for my classes. 

This issue of our newsletter includes profiles of an innovative entrepreneurship program created within a School of Hotel Administration and of a graduate program in global entrepreneurship. We also share some insights into the flipped classroom, which has become a part of many discussions about entrepreneurship pedagogy.

We welcome innovations and ideas in entrepreneurship education from your programs that you would like to share with your colleagues around the globe. Just send them along to me at jeff.cornwall@belmont.edu   

Hospitality Entrepreneurship

Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship within the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University recently launched a Concentration in Entrepreneurship.  

The first required course in the concentration, “Conversations with Entrepreneurs,” is a two-credit course. This course exposes students to entrepreneurial thinking and helps them to develop their networking skills.  Mona Anita Olsen, Visiting Assistant Professor, uses the course as “a way to support the conversation on entrepreneurship in hospitality and encourage networking with our strong alumni base.” Networking is a core competency for those in the hotel industry and a fundamental skill for entrepreneurs. Successful alumni of the School of Hotel Administration play a key role in the course. 

“The course gives students the opportunity to work on pitching ideas and networking during the class to entrepreneurial leaders,” says Olsen. “During class, I have them outline a trail of their path forward to leverage entrepreneurial resources at Cornell.” 

Conversations with Entrepreneurs has no pre-requisites and is offered with satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading system. During the summer this course is offered as an asynchronous, online course.

The Entrepreneurship Concentration within the School of Hotel Administration includes two additional required courses, one in entrepreneurial management and one in business planning. Students in the concentration also choose at least two entrepreneurship electives from the following:

• Introductory Hospitality Entrepreneurship

• Corporate Entrepreneurship

• Technology for Bootstrapped Entrepreneurship

• Entrepreneurial Finance

• Law for Entrepreneurs

• Restaurant Entrepreneurship

• Business Plan Competition

All of the School of Hotel Administration’s entrepreneurship courses are open to both graduate and undergraduate students.

Global Entrepreneurship Program

Purdue University, EMLYON Business School in France, and Zhejiang University in China have joined forces to create a joint Global Entrepreneurship graduate program. Students earn a Master of Science but have the option of earning a dual degree from Purdue and EMLYON through this program.

The primary goal of the program is to create entrepreneurial leaders for the global economy.

In this cohort program, taught in English, students spend the fall studying in Lyon, France. During this first term, students study core classes in Entrepreneurship and managing multicultural teams. They also work on a European business project, including business plans and consulting projects.

In the spring, the cohort moves to China where they continue their studies in business. As they did during their time in France, students also engage in studying culture and working on business projects.

During the final term of the program, students study at Purdue University. Here they round out their studies in business, examine social entrepreneurship, and study the effective strategies for managing a growing venture. While in Indiana, students complete business projects within the American economic environment.

Students attend an event hosted by the Junior World Entrepreneurship Forum, where they pitch to investors, work with incubator companies, and participate in various workshops.

The forty-four students in the current cohort come from the U.S., Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Senegal, and Tunisia.

Flipped Down Under

The flipped classroom is a pedagogical approach that continues to attract interest among entrepreneurship educators. In a flipped classroom, students are exposed to course content before class typically through online videos and reading. In class, they then work in groups around experiential exercises, projects, and so forth tied to the topic. The professor and guest entrepreneurs can go from group to group offering advice and clarification to the student teams.

University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia has designed a classroom that fits with the “flipped” pedagogy. It also is an ideal design for those who teach with other experiential pedagogies, project-based classes, and even case method teaching.

You can view two short videos that describe the benefits of the flipped classroom and see the design of the room designed for this type of class at UNSW here and here.

Martin Bliemel, a lecturer at UNSW, published two interesting papers on the flipped classroom titled “Lessons from an inside-out flip in entrepreneurship education” and “Getting Entrepreneurship Education Out of the Classroom and into Students Heads” that should prove insightful for those of you who are contemplating or working on “flipping” your entrepreneurship classes. In fact, even those of you who are skeptical should take the time to view this video and read his paper.

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