Under the leadership of senior vice president Caryn
McTighe Musil, AAC&U convened a pre-conference symposium
at its 2005 annual meeting called "Working Convergences:
Liberal Education, Creativity, and the Entrepreneurial
Spirit," with the goal of examining "some of the points
of connection, controversy, and creativity that can
be found in new curricular initiatives that lift entrepreneurial
ideas outside of the confines of business schools and
into traditional arts and sciences disciplines." The
symposium was supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman
Foundation as part of its initiative on liberal education
and was also supported by the Kauffman Consortium for
Liberal Education and Entrepreneurship and AAC&U's
Center for Liberal Education and Civic Engagement. The
Kauffman Foundation is also supporting this issue of
Peer Review, which features articles that capture
the essence of the symposium presentations.
The call for bringing entrepreneurship learning to
arts and sciences disciplines and to undergraduates
majoring in fields beyond just business is often met
by some with skepticism and debate. Symposium participants
articulated a wide array of views about the relationship
between entrepreneurship and liberal education during
the symposium. To give you a sense of the comments and
concerns expressed, I include below excerpts from selected
symposium participants.
"Entrepreneurship is not limited to business, but
this idea may generate some campus turf wars as others
try to use the term."
"I'm concerned that we cloak ourselves in some
degree of self-satisfaction about how the liberal arts
are fertile backgrounds for entrepreneurial thinking
and action....How do we know this is the case?"
"Entrepreneurship is favorably viewed in the humanities…
.individual faculty ARE entrepreneurs. They administer
many community service internships that are quite entrepreneurial
in their approach."
"[My] colleagues would not be able to separate
the term from the corporate world, and would not be
interested in participating in any effort to use it
somehow to describe work in the arts."
"The spirit of entrepreneurship represents the
appreciation of the opportunity presented by the unanticipated
situation. Students need to know how and should be trained
to optimize such opportunities."
I attended this symposium with great interest and an
informed perspective because I had recently been compelled
to pursue some entrepreneurial training of my own. Last
spring, after developing a commercial publications project,
I realized that, despite my own liberal education, I
lacked many of the fundamental skills needed to support
this type of endeavor. I enrolled in an intensive thirteen-week
entrepreneurship course sponsored by the National Women's
Business Center in Washington, DC, entitled "Up and
Running: Tools You Need to Kick-start Your Dreams."
The Up and Running class met once a week for three
hours and the sessions were taught by dynamic business
professionals on topics such as legal and regulatory
considerations, business planning, accounting, marketing,
pricing, and risk management. Approximately half of
my fellow classmates came into the program with straight
financial concerns--they were starting traditional businesses
and were seeking strategies to increase their bottom
lines. The other class members were starting nonprofit
businesses to benefit their communities--they expressed
the need for practical and philosophical support. Initially
it seemed that each half of the class had very different
needs.
Through the weeks we learned about the key elements
needed to start and maintain a prosperous business enterprise.
In addition to learning very practical information,
we also discussed the importance of balancing financial
considerations with strategic vision, ethics, and values.
When the last class session came to an end, I had a
clear sense of the factors that might cause a business
to succeed or fail. I also came to understand that the
needs of the traditional and social entrepreneur were
not so different--both need the same basic knowledge,
skills, and sense of mission to realize their goals.
My experience leads me to believe that most undergraduate
students would benefit greatly from having a more developed
entrepreneurial spirit and a set of practiced entrepreneurial
skills in their toolkit as they enter the workplace.
This issue of Peer Review presents many innovative
and creative examples of the ways a variety of institutions
have infused entrepreneurial spirit into their programs
and curriculum. We hope that reading these articles
will stimulate further discussions among faculty, administrators,
and students. These are certain to be lively interchanges
that are filled with enthusiasm, notes of caution, and
possibility.
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