By Kristen Herrick
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| Kristen Herrick taking a break at Entrepreneurship Immersion Week with participants from other universities |
I was on break at
work during the summer and decided to check my email. Upon opening my inbox, I
saw an email about Entrepreneurship Immersion Week from Read Wakefield, the
director of Entrepreneurship Studies at AU. I was instantly curious and after reviewing Read’s email, I discovered
that Entrepreneurship Immersion Week is a part of the Entrepreneurship
Education Consortium (EEC), a collaboration of 11 Northeast Ohio colleges and
universities, in which Ashland University was a founding university. Read was
putting together a team of five AU students who would then compete at The University of Akron against 10
other colleges by creating a product or concept, determining all of the details
that would make it a real product in the market, and presenting it to a panel
of judges. Read told me that Bruce Keller, the previous coordinator of tutoring
services as Ashland, referred me and that I should apply.
At first, I was
hesitant. I’m not a business major, so why would I compete? However, I reminded
myself that I had both an office job on campus and an ongoing marketing
internship that I loved. I realized that my English degree may lead me to a
fulltime career in business and this could be a valuable experience to both
learn and network. So I applied and was chosen.
I was both extremely
nervous and excited to spend a week at The University of Akron with 55 students
and 12 faculty members that I did not know. Not only was I nervous about not knowing anyone, but also
that I had only taken three business classes in my life! My fears were quickly allayed when I walked into my dorm room at UA and met my
friendly, fashion-forward roommate, Hannah Betz. Over the next few hours I met
the rest of my team: Mack Reece, Morgan Hall, and Shelbie Prince and mingled
with the other teams.
Over
the next week, I attended entrepreneurship classes, listened to guest speakers, and worked at maximum capacity to think of an invention and bring it to life
with my team. It was an exhausting, challenging, and enlightening experience.
The professors and professionals who taught the classes were experts in their
fields and very helpful, the guest speakers were wise and inspiring, and the
students were intelligent and motivated. The first two days, we had no idea what our invention would
be. We finally decided on a tissue box that would have a slide-out compartment where used tissues
could be placed. We thought it would be ideal for long car rides or road trips
since most people don't have trashcans in their vehicles. After interviewing a
diverse group of people, we discovered that moms and teachers were particularly
interested. We created a prototype of our tissue box and perfected our
presentation for the judges. Unfortunately, we didn’t place in
the top three, but we were proud of our invention will always look back on that
week as a great experience.
