In the News

One of Mundelein High School's Incubatoredu program startups, "Safe Sip," recently moved on as a finalist in the INCubatoredu National competition. Safe Sip, a drink-spiking detection product, is one of the top five Incubator startups in the country competing for this national honor. The Safe Sip startup was created by five senior girls at Mundelein High School. 

Rounding out its fifth year at Vandegrift, the Entrepreneurship/INCubatoredu program has grown to become one of the most popular course requests among students. Taught by teachers Erin Mathis and Erin Lucas, the course allows students to spearhead the creation of their own unique businesses, whilst incorporating vital knowledge of business management and marketing research. 

This spring, we’ve found pockets of excellence in three dozen high school visits...where we’ve spotted evidence of deeper learning (i.e., engagement, critical thinking, excellent public products). It’s been work that matters to the learner and their community– it’s relevant, purposeful, and consequential work.

Entrepreneurship is a long, but rewarding, journey and it requires time, talent, financial resources, and community support to create success.  If I hadn’t taken note of these brothers during my early morning work outs, I would have missed out on discovering the incredible story of DeoBlock and how I could offer guidance and resources for these young entrepreneurs.

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. 

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...

This fall, thousands of students at 196 high schools nationwide -- and even four high schools in Australia -- will start their own companies as part of a business incubator class launched nine years ago in Barrington.

NORTH FOND DU LAC (NBC 26)  — What started out as an INCubatoredu class project is now a massive business success, exceeding all expectations. Commah, a line of air fresheners, car diffusers, and essential oils is now sold online and at several local salons and businesses, and will soon have a spot on the shelves of Festival Foods.

If putting an idea out for expert evaluation is nerve-racking, Grand Island Senior High students Kowsslo Teya and Colton Marsh didn’t show it. Teya and Marsh were challenged to come up with a product idea that would solve a societal problem as part of their INCubatoredu class at GISH’s Academy of Buisness & Communication.

When Amaan Rumi’s business incubator team at Westlake High School came up with the idea to create an app that helps people manage medications and keeps track of things like conflicting drugs and patient allergies, he thought of his grandmother.