Rutgers-Camden program encourages them to start businesses
CAMDEN — Rutgers–Camden is launching a new program designed to cultivate entrepreneurial skills in Camden’s middle school and high school students.Funded by a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the program offers Camden teachers microfinance entrepreneurship training at Rutgers–Camden that they will bring into their classrooms to encourage students to start businesses.
“What we are trying to do is unleash their creativity to create value, create jobs, and revitalize the community,” says Briance Mascarenhas, professor of management at the Rutgers School of Business–Camden.
It is modeled on a program at Rutgers–Camden in which teams of undergraduate and MBA students in an entrepreneurship class are given seed money to test their venture idea and possibly generate income by the end of the semester. The Rutgers students identify needs in the community and devise a venture that addresses it in a way that improves the triple bottom line: people, planet, and profits.
Examples of business ventures include offering healthier breakfasts at work or recycling electronics. The grant will introduce the program to Woodrow Wilson High School and community organizations, such as the faith-based Camden Dream Center, while also preparing them for collegiate business education.
The grant will also encourage entrepreneurs and faculty to be guest speakers to share their insights, experiences, and contacts with Camden middle school and high school students. It will also fund research to search for successful entrepreneurial ventures that have been started in inner cities around the world and then introduce them to Camden.
“We’re very excited about it and we want to inspire some young entrepreneurs in the city,” Mascarenhas says. “Entrepreneurship generates most new jobs, so it’s a way to revitalize the city. By having these two-way exchanges, it enriches our classrooms. Some of the major success stories today, like Google, were created by students. We have to encourage and tap the potential of students.”
Google, the most widely-used web-based search engine in the world, began as a research project by students at Stanford University.
“We want to encourage the students to become entrepreneurs,” Mascarenhas says. “They have imaginations and can see things that others don’t. We want to give them an opportunity to realize their dreams by encouraging them to test their ideas in a low-cost, low-risk way using microfinance. While microfinance has been used internationally to alleviate poverty, this program introduces it to education to encourage active learning instead of passive learning.”
The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation awarded Rutgers–Camden with a $25,000 grant to fund the initiative. The foundation’s mission is to support educational, cultural, social, and environmental values that contribute to making society more humane and the world more livable.
“It is an innovative program that promises to bring positive change to the student community and perhaps chart future career opportunities for the kids,” foundation president and CEO Christopher J. Daggett said in a letter to Mascarenhas.
Mascarenhas says, “We’re very excited the Dodge Foundation has decided to fund this proposal. Entrepreneurship education, historically, asked students to create a business plan, which is a step in the right direction. We’re adding an earlier step, encouraging them to test their idea before developing an academic business plan. It’s been an important program at Rutgers–Camden, and we thought it could bring about positive change by extending into the Camden schools and community.”
Those interested in the program can contact Mascarenhas at mascaren@camden.rutgers.edu.
Media Contact: Ed Moorhouse
856-225-6759
E-mail: ejmoor@camden.rutgers.edu