College Pathway Programs - Pathways in Leadership and Entrepreneurship (Session 2)

This three-week course is designed to introduce you to the skills required to develop your leadership capacity and start your own ventures. At its core, entrepreneurship is the process of identifying a problem and creating a solution. In this course, students will learn the art of opportunity identification, and will understand how to transform compelling opportunities into new ventures as creative leaders. They will mine their own insights and experiences to build their leadership capital, using a series of activities first developed for use with MBA students at UChicago’s Booth School of Business. Along the way, students will also receive an introduction to the principles and practices of critical thinking, argument, perspective-taking, and public speaking that are crucial to articulating and actualizing entrepreneurial solutions. Working in teams, students will learn what goes into creating a sustainable venture, and will create a persuasive business plan, for either a for-profit or not-for-profit venture, that has an impact and meets a need. This plan will be pitched to a panel of professionals on the final day of the course. The abilities required to be a great entrepreneur -- creativity, persistence, problem solving, communication – will be developed in this course in a way that will benefit students in all aspects of life, including educational pursuits, jobs, and relationships.