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Participants in the 2011 McGuire Entrepreneurship Program Year-End Showcase.
Photo by Daron Shade.
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McGuire Entrepreneurship Students Leap Through Final Academic Hurdle
May 2011
By Liz Warren-Pederson
Students who complete the year-long McGuire Entrepreneurship Program walk away with a business plan, but their academic experience goes far beyond that document.
“It’s really clear that the students develop broad knowledge and understanding of the venture process well beyond the business plan,” said Sherry Hoskinson, director of the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship. “We try to measure that understanding through academic reviews, which we’ve done for the past several years.”
The purpose of the academic review is to assess individual performance of students using the same lens – something the year-end competition, which focuses more on the ventures themselves, was not designed to achieve.
Over two days, a panel of three academic reviewers from peer institutions heard each team present their venture. The teams then defended their ventures in a 15-minute Q&A session.
“It was certainly nerve-racking, considering it was one of the major presentations we had worked towards all year,” said Brittany Hultstrom (BSBA Marketing and Entrepreneurship ’11), who was part of the three-person SAB Manufacturing team. “We put many hours in to prepare for it, which helped to bring down the stress level.”
Like the year-end competition, the academic review focused on the extent to which the venture was investment-ready. But unlike the competition, which occurs over a single, rapid-fire day, the academic review panel had the time to drill down with each team.
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