Entrepreneurship Support: What Entrepreneurship Programs Provide vs. What Students Want
Dr. Thomas M. Katona – Associate Professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Dr. Sarah Zappe – Director, Leonhard Center, Assistant Dean for Teaching and Learning, Research Professor
“We” say these are the goals
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“Recognize entrepreneurial opportunities for new business ventures and evaluate their potential for business success”
“advance knowledge and educate students in innovation-driven entrepreneurship in a manner that will best serve the world in the 21st century”
“graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work”
“prepare effective, insightful entrepreneurial leaders and to enhance knowledge about entrepreneurship and innovation”
And this is the how
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Adapted from Thompson, Scott, and Gibson, 2009
And this is the structure
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C. Brush, Innovative Pathways for University Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century Advances in the Study of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Economic Growth, Volume 24, 2539
Entrepreneurship Education Ecosystem
But what do “we” say “we” do?
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We Asked Chatgpt to
“Write a university entrepreneurship center press release”
Build Businesses!!
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“The center will provide resources and support to students, faculty, and the community to foster entrepreneurial ventures.”
The Entrepreneurship Center will offer a range of services to help aspiring entrepreneurs turn their ideas into successful businesses.
The center will provide access to mentors, investors, and other resources necessary to build a successful enterprise. The center will also offer networking opportunities and events to connect students with successful entrepreneurs in the community.
"We want to provide our students with the resources they need to turn their ideas into successful businesses.“
The Entrepreneurship Center will also offer workshops and training programs designed to help students develop their entrepreneurial skills. (Oh yeah, and this too…)
And student’s appreciate this
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“I never have just regretted anything, any of the things that we did or achieved. I definitely up’ed … being a better leader … as far as the venture and the things that we learned, things that we did, it was great. It was a great time. So we learned a lot.”
“It brought a ton of learning. … I felt really, really grateful for that experience to be able to broaden my skill set, my scope beyond just the technical work. … I'm super grateful for the experience because I also think it's an awesome story to tell. I think that it's the reason why I'm here today.”
I think it just gets more positive over time. I'm just so grateful for the experience and I literally would not be where I am today without it. I feel like I employ skills that I gleaned from the experience in my everyday work.
Oh, I I think positive overall. I see both of them as very positive experiences. especially like when I was applying to be a (new position). That was a distinguishing factor. … I was able to show that I got funding so I think in a lot of ways those companies helped me to get a job offer as a (new position), which was great.
But building business resources are different than building entrepreneur resources
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“But having someone in the program being like, ‘If this either doesn't grow and just stays a little company that does a few shows a year or if it fades away completely. It's totally fine. Having someone say that, I think, would have been helpful.’”
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“but what I saw, just as a general thing, was being kind of just dismissed for being an engineer, … I was a little bit of an advocate for mental health … And they also offered-- for these specific things, it would have been incredibly valuable if they had some kind of collaboration with, I don't know, the College of Medicine or something or the Student Health, just having a therapist that is willing to come in as a group session for these students … but they were not presented as an option for that.
I was pretty much point-blank told, "This is how it works: we pay for you to go to these competitions and stuff and for you to win because then we are able to use you as evidence as to why people should attend our program versus anyone else's." … but that made it so that their incentivization was to make us burn twice as bright for half as long while we were in school.”
But building business resources are different than building entrepreneur resources
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But building business resources are different than building entrepreneur resources
“We just didn't necessarily have the mentorship. And I think a key mentorship would have just been a mentor who literally tells you to get out a certain time … it's kind of annoying that (University Name) and everyone else kind of like egged us on with like really small amounts of money, but they seem like a lot because it's like-- you know what? To a starving college student $5,000 is a lot of money. $5,000 won't even get you a trial somewhere.”
Who we’ve talked to
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16 students/former students who started entrepreneurial ventures in college whose ventures are no longer in operation
Took in more than $5,000
Engineering / Technical Education
~ Hour long semi-structured qualitative interviews
What’s Next?
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More interviews! Aiming for a total of 30
Exploring implementation of requested concepts in entrepreneurial programming (curricular or co-curricular)
Paper on how student entrepreneur’s define “Failure” at ASEE
Contact Us
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If you have former student entrepreneur’s who you think may be interested in participating in this research please contact us:
Tom Katona: tkatona@calpoly.edu
Sarah Zappe: ser163@psu.edu
Special thanks to the National Science Foundation for providing funding for this work under the Research Initiation in Engineering Formation program