In the News

At this very moment, women across the United States are sitting on million-dollar ideas, like a product that fills a niche or a service that solves a unique challenge. And increasingly, women are turning those ideas into entrepreneurship opportunities. Women accounted for 49% of business startups in 2021, a 28% jump from two years earlier. 

High school students who partake in entrepreneurial experiences through a rigorous curriculum and who may dream of starting their own business can earn college credit while following their passion, thanks to a new partnership between Stuart School of Business at Illinois Institute of Technology and Uncharted Learning, a not-for-profit organization committed to providing authentic entrepreneurship experiences for students in school districts across the nation.

The popular television show "Shark Tank" made its way out of California and into a classroom at Lake Belton High School on Tuesday.

It's part of the INCubatoredu program the district offers to upperclassmen. It gives an authentic entrepreneurship experience, with the help of local business owners.

More than 40 students took the opportunity to deliver their business ideas to 22 different local business owners in a "Shark Tank" style pitch. The ideas included, apps, programs, and other services the students believe are needed in society.

Commah derived from an entrepreneurship course at Horace Mann High School in the North Fond du Lac School District called INCubatorEdu.

Kurt Wismer, lead learner for INCubatorEdu@nfdl, said as part of the course, students create a startup using the Lean Startup method.

“Our young entrepreneurs identify a problem, then work through the lean process, along with a small army of community business mentors and coaches to ideate, research, prototype, test and rapid-build their business solution,” he said.

November is National Entrepreneurship Month, which spotlights the importance of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. To mark the occasion, Whiteboard Advisors’ Kelly Branning, spoke with Mark Cuban about his visit to an entrepreneurship class, the importance of entrepreneurship education, and why students should embrace failure rather than fear it.

“This innovative program takes the student beyond a textbook and places them in a real-world experience that takes place over an entire school year. The curriculum is at such a high level that it is ranked as a dual-credit class and teaches the students concepts beyond what they’d receive in a masters-level class. After completion of the first year, the program was said to have succeeded beyond expectations. Now the program is in its second year, and it continues to change the lives of Farmington High School students. The Daily Journal/ Farmington Press proudly presents this year’s Citizen of the Year award to Christy Pierce.”

Lewisville High School’s INCubatoredu course has been described as a version of the hit television show Shark Tank for young entrepreneurs. So what better way to give students entrepreneurial advice than to hear from a Shark himself – Mark Cuban.

Toward the end of the 2020-21 school year, I developed a plan. Come June, I’d walk out of The Colony High School near Lewisville, Texas, leaving behind a 14-year career in education, then return to corporate America. It wasn’t so much the stress of COVID-19 and remote instruction that did me in, but the monotony. I found myself teaching the same courses, serving on the same committees, feeling the same anxieties — year after year after year. Plus I realized I was becoming more flustered when the least little thing didn’t go as planned in my career education and training classes. I wanted my lessons to be perfect. I wanted to be perfect...