Community Colleges as Incubators of Innovation

While community colleges have traditionally focused on providing students with opportunities to gain credentials for employment, the increasingly important question is: Are they preparing students for looming, dynamic, disruptive, and entrepreneurial environments ahead?

The expert course contributors, with the support of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE), start from the premise that community colleges are uniquely positioned to lead entrepreneurial initiatives through both internally-generated curriculum design and through collaboration with the local entrepreneurial community to build bridges between the classroom and the community, which in turn can offer models of implementation and constitute a network or support system for students. Community colleges can become incubators of innovation, a magnet for talent, and provide the impetus for development strategies that their communities have not begun to realize.

Course topics include:

1. Leading with an Entrepreneurial Mindset
2. An Entrepreneurial Approach to Education
3. Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
4. Entrepreneurship and Workforce Development
5. How Collaboration Supports the Growth of an Urban Ecosystem
6. The Ecosystem that Thrives
7. Creating an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Rural Appalachia
8. Community Colleges as Entrepreneurial Catalysts
9. The Power of Collective Action
10. Sustainability Lessons

Based on decades of research and outreach, this course is the perfect professional development opportunity blended with actionable assignments for real-world impact.  Students may complete the course in an accelerated or extended format, providing the flexibility most professionals require.

Presenter:

Samantha Steidle, Educator, Facilitator & Researcher

Bio: Samantha has over 18 years experience in entrepreneurship and innovation. She is an educator, facilitator, researcher, and speaker for futuristic topics in business and academia. She regularly hosts workshops and consults on the topics of revenue innovation, the art of delegation, new business models, entrepreneurial philanthropy, design thinking, inbound outreach, gig-economy, the future of work, recruiting innovators, and the entrepreneurial mindset. While serving as Innovation Officer at Virginia Western Community College, she contributed to the creation of six entrepreneurial initiatives including three coworking spaces (including CoLab Coworking), an incubator, an accelerator (RAMP), a FabLab and an innovation corridor. She earned her Bachelor's in Accounting from Radford University, Master's in Business Administration from University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire, and will complete her Ph.D. in Community College Leadership from Old Dominion University in 2020.