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RE: Preparing Great Entrepreneurship Educators

Entrepreneurship poses a unique challenge for colleges and universities.  Tight budgets make it tough to staff entrepreneurship courses, even as student demand grows unabated. And there is a concern with ensuring quality, rigor, and substance. Schools are scrambling to find qualified faculty to design and deliver courses in basic entrepreneurship, venture start-up, small business growth, creativity, business plan preparation, entrepreneurial finance, entrepreneurial consulting and related areas. Meanwhile, new minors, majors, certificates, master's degrees and MBA concentrations in entrepreneurship are being launched. Faculty from across the campus are getting involved as university-wide entrepreneurship takes off.  

Many of these individuals lack exposure to "best practices" in the entrepreneurship classroom.  Some know little of the core content of an entrepreneurship course, or are less familiar with the use of cases, business plans, field projects and related teaching tools. Others are uncertain in terms of how to build a curriculum and program in entrepreneurship. Some have had little exposure to the organization of the entrepreneurship classroom. 

To address these needs, thirteen years ago we created the Experiential Classroom, a rigorous clinic to help faculty new to entrepreneurship. Our first twelve offerings received outstanding reviews (let us know if you would like to talk to any of the previous delegates). The clinic lasts three days, and is delivered by some of the top educators in the country. It is a content rich program, and introduces a number of highly effective, state-of-the-art approaches to the teaching of entrepreneurship. 

Hosted by Oklahoma State University, the Experiential Classroom XIII will be offered in Tulsa, Oklahoma from September 20-23, 2012.  We would like to invite applications to the Clinic. This could be from an existing faculty member re-tooling so that they can teach entrepreneurship, a new faculty member, a center director or an entrepreneur or adjunct who wants to come back to the classroom.  Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis, and is limited to 70 delegates. The tuition is $1700 per delegate, and we have a limited number of partial scholarships funded by the Riata Entrepreneurship Center and the United States Association for Small Business & Entrepreneurship (USASBE).  These are awarded based on need and allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.  The Clinic itself fills up quickly as we limit the size.

Information and application forms can be found at http://entrepreneurship.okstate.edu/classroom. Please give me a call at (405) 744-5357 or Crystal at (405) 744-3325 if you have any questions.

Mike

Michael H. Morris, Ph.D.

Professor and N. Malone Mitchell Chair

Oklahoma State University

Stillwater, OK  74078

Ph:  (405) 744-5357; Fax:  (405) 744-7679

Website:  http://entrepreneurship.okstate.edu