Entrepreneurship

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Founding Member of "Grand Challenges Leaders of Tomorrow" Student Group

(Spring 2018-Present)

(Silver Experience)

The "Grand Challenges Leaders of Tomorrow" Student Group was created to spread awareness fo the Grand Challenges and provide opportunities, such as service and outreach, for students on campus to learn more about the 14 Grand Challenges.

The Student Group got started in Spring of 2019, and I was lucky enough to be able to help initiate this. The Student Group works together to provide events on campus to help spread news of the 14 Grand Challenges outside of the Engineering and Technology College.

Reflecting on this Experience

This experience has allowed me to learn more about the 14 Grand Challenges as well as gain some insight into entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not something to be taken lightly, it takes a lot of work, both individual and team effort, to get a group up and running. This was a small scale version of starting an organization from scratch, it is not an easy thing to do. There are lots of road blocks along the way. Having stuck with helping this Student Group form and get started, I have been able to learn many things about teamwork, persistence, perseverance, and integrity.

Entrepreneurship Learning Objectives

Develop strategies for recognizing opportunities and identifying the tools for quality risk assessment.
- In starting this group, there were many times that the initial plan was turned down. After a few times of being turned down, it became important to think about the risk of possibly being turned down once again and what we could do to prevent this from happening. This way the group could get formed efficiently and start being effective.

Exhibit skills for communicating ideas in a concise and logical way.
- Initially, the students who started the group did not meet regularly to discuss progress and what needed to be done. In response to this, not many things got completed in a timely manner. To fix this, the group started meeting weekly to make sure progress was being made.

Work effectively in teams focused on entrepreneurship-related projects.
- The most important thing to the students was to make sure the group would get started and provide a good service to the community. Working efficiently and effectively as a team was crucial to the success of the group.

Apply entrepreneurial thinking to social issues and social problems.
- When thinking about what the group could provide to the campus and student body, many ideas were generated and then in turn rejected. It eventually came down to thinking about what service would be of good value to the community and this is what finally got the student group started

Program Wide Objectives

Being a team member: Identify strengths and weaknesses of all members of a partnership or collaboration; empower group members to use their strengths, and support weaker team members. Both assign and accept duties and roles intelligently and flexibly.
- Starting any group or organization is much easier said than done, however if you are not alone, it becomes a lot easier. This is true if all members are willing to put in the work and contribute their part to the organization.

Integrity: Identify and be able to elaborate on and justify core beliefs and values; act consistently in accordance with those beliefs and values across contexts; regard themselves as accountable for those actions.
- As stated before, the group got turned down many times before it got accepted and recognized on campus. One of the most important things to those of us starting the group was that we were able to start the group without losing sight of what we wanted to provide for the campus. We had to stick to our core beliefs of what the group could be.

Perspectivism: Seek out and fairly consider ethical perspectives and concepts other than own, and ensures these perspectives and concepts appropriately inform their own actions and views.
- It was important to all of us that we made sure everyone's opinion on the group was heard and listened to respectfully while the group was being formed.

Realistic vision: Be imaginative in thinking about alternatives to the way things are, while being sensitive to the constraints of the real world.
- One of the largest challenges we faced when forming this group was not being over ambitious.

Persistence: Confront difficulties resolutely, and persevere in trying to manage them. Reframe failures and mistakes as learning opportunities, and does not allow them to become disabling or discouraging. Follow through on commitments.
- This group took a lot of trial and error to get started. There were many times where we could have collectively agreed as a group that it was not going to work and to stop trying. But because we kept trying, eventually the student group got formed and is better for the changes it went through.

Flexibility: Adapt quickly and thoughtfully to unexpected changes and developments and accommodate them fluidly in plans and projects. Incorporate new information to progress toward intended outcomes.
- Our plans were changed many times and we had to react and adapt to the change as fast as we could to prove that we could overcome the challenges and become a student group.

Personal Learning Objective

Understand successful organizations and effective leadership strategies.
- One of the most important things that we accomplished as a group was looking at successful organizations on campus to help develop the outline of what we wanted the student group to do.

“Grand Challenge Scholars Program.” Entrepreneurship - Grand Challenge Scholars Program - UMBC, gcsp.umbc.edu/entrepreneurship/.

Experiences