The Courtship between STEM & Entrepreneurship | Pt. 2 “Do We have Chemistry?”

Traditionally, courtship is a behavior designed to persuade towards a permanent relationship. During the courting process, a dating couple decides if marriage is the final act and the transition from courtship to engagement has levels of progression. That progression is mostly centered around the question, “Do we have Chemistry?” The explorative activities designed to answer this question create a memorable experience!

STEM is the catalyst and change agent to advancing science research in curing societal diseases, creating technological processes to keep our nation safe and designing innovative structures in our communities. In its singleness STEM is powerful; paving careers and financial opportunities well into 2029. However, the courtship between STEM and Entrepreneurship has produced powerful Chemistry! Both disciplines have participated in joint activities in both K-12 and Higher Education environments yielding a promising future together.

What’s happening in our K-12 community?

Most recently (2016), our K-12 communities have experimented with integrating STEM and Entrepreneurship via summer camps and partnerships with external curriculum designers outside the traditional classroom.

How?

Since STEM and Entrepreneurship require similar skill sets (critical thinking, problem solving, planning, creativity and teamwork), students are applying STEM skills towards Entrepreneurial ventures in Science, Technology and Engineering.

Who?

An example of the promising courtship between STEM and Entrepreneurship: Jason Learning, a nonprofit focused on K-12 STEM curriculum, touts the integration of STEM and Entrepreneurship and hosts Design and Pitch Challenges for K-12 students empowering innovative designs and pitching to an audience of seasoned entrepreneurs. Another spicy courtship example is the Boston Leadership Institute’s summer camp exposing 6th - 12th graders to hands-on activities guiding STEM Entrepreneurship, to include exercises on the hows of exploring market opportunities, business plan development and creating sales pitches.

The courtship is heating up! Do we have Chemistry?

Let’s explore the chemistry between STEM and Entrepreneurship in Higher Education

The Small Business Administration (SBA) advocates Entrepreneurship education especially since small businesses are the cornerstone of the United States advancing employment, securing solid global positioning in innovation, and research and development. As of 2006, over 1000 higher institutions were offering entrepreneurship coursework as a major, minor or through an entrepreneurship center. Today, that number has nearly doubled as higher institutions have created and are creating entrepreneurship curriculum to meet the demands of a competitive marketplace of consumers.

Entrepreneurship meets STEM

STEM Entrepreneurship has been popularized in many institutions and most notably, of the top 12 STEM U.S. universities, all offer a variety of STEM related entrepreneurial coursework. STEM students are exposed to science and technological innovation born out of extensive research producing breakthroughs in science and technology. Outside of the classroom, STEM students and other majors also have access to Entrepreneurship/Innovation centers on campus housed with support to advance entrepreneurial and small business endeavors.

An awesome example of the chemistry between STEM and Entrepreneurship is Santa Clara University’s STEM Innovation Center; one of the largest STEM education centers in the country connects students to interdisciplinary innovation creating environments to explore big ideas in STEM and Entrepreneurship. Patents! Innovation! Financial planning! Financial Projections! Marketing!

Lets further the discussion

Do we have Chemistry? STEM and Entrepreneurship; Where do we go from here? Let me know your thought below.

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