Featured Idea: Re-Imagining Business School Education to Create the Next Generation of Social Entrep

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2008-12-07 09:40:00 UTC
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Curt DeBerg is an education entrepreneur at California State University, Chico. His Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship program is emblematic of the innovations in education that are putting a higher premium on applied experiences and a social justice perspective. Check out his Idea for Change in America or read his interview below.

What's the idea?
What do you get when you combine (a) social enterprise, problem-based learning and interscholastic competition at the high school level with (b) community service-learning and leadership development at the university level? You get a potent, scaleable new formula that has already proven itself to be successful through a program called Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE— http://sageglobal.org/).

Where does the idea come from?
I'm a business professor at California State University, Chico. When I was the faculty adviser for a collegiate student group known as Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) from 1993-2005, I saw that students became extraordinarily motivated and enthused when they were empowered to identify, lead, operate, and assess real-life outreach projects. By giving university students the chance to create their own learning opportunities, I saw how the same outcomes could be achieved at the high school level.

What role could the Obama admin have in the project?
The Department of Education could encourage and fund innovative high schools to implement SAGE as part of the Career and Technical Education programs in each state. Similarly, it could also encourage and fund innovative community colleges and universities to implement SAGE as part of its outreach, service-learning and social enterprise programs.

Why should this be a priority?
To develop the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders, we must engage today’s high school and college business students in both micro and macro social entrepreneurship as tools for societal change through non traditional course content and innovative pedagogy. By leveraging upon existing underutilized capacity in schools and universities to provide the property, plant and equipment necessary, we can rapidly scale up and amplify the effects of this innovation to produce a future replete with social entrepreneurs.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
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