Giving Students More Opportunities for Impact

• When students work on projects with significance to the community, they not only hone their business skills, but also are inspired to continue having societal impact once they assume leadership roles.
• At the University of South Carolina Upstate, students have worked on projects that support economic growth in the region, from developing a resource portal for entrepreneurs to helping microentrepreneurs build their businesses.
• Through experiential learning, business schools can help students develop the impact-oriented growth mindsets that are increasingly sought after by organizations that are committed to societal impact.

As business educators, we have a responsibility to train students to succeed in organizations and position them to serve their communities. Graham Glass, CEO of edtech company Cypher Learning, emphasizes this very point in a July 2022 AACSB Insights article. “If students truly are going to have a societal impact once they become leaders, they must learn how to address real challenges,” he writes. “Business schools should institute a project-based learning approach, so students must develop strategies for solving problems in their communities.”

At the University of South Carolina (USC) Upstate in Spartanburg, we knew that our students could have the impact that Glass describes. Specifically, at the George Dean Johnson Jr. College of Business and Economics (JCBE), we created opportunities for them to serve the community through projects that support the needs of entrepreneurial ecosystems in the Upstate of South Carolina.

These activities, which are hands-on and ongoing, have involved creating an online resource for entrepreneurs, assisting with the activities of our accelerator, and gathering and analyzing community data. Through these projects, our students apply their business skills to real-world challenges, all while they achieve positive societal impact.

Just as important, these projects instill in our students entrepreneurial growth mindsets that will help them become better at innovating and problem-solving. They will need these critical skills if they are to overcome obstacles and push forward in their future careers.

Our Entrepreneurship Resource Portal

In 2020, we hired a group of student interns and challenged them to develop a free, web-based entrepreneurship portal that would act as a one-stop resource for entrepreneurs. We knew this project would have three major benefits. First and foremost, it would help the entrepreneurs in Spartanburg, who at that time did not have such a region-based resource available to them.

Second, it would align with three central goals of JCBE’s mission and strategic plan: to create jobs, foster connections, and contribute to and build a sense of belonging in the community. And, third, it would align with AACSB’s goal to “connect business schools, industry, nonprofits, and government to drive positive societal change in the world.”

Our projects instill entrepreneurial growth mindsets in our students, helping them become better innovators and problem-solvers.

Our interns included three business students and a graphic design student, with each devoting approximately 10 hours weekly to the project. Several business faculty members and a USC Upstate professor of graphic design served as subject matter experts to the team.

The students began the portal’s initial research and development stage by reviewing web-based resources in entrepreneurial ecosystems in the United States. Many of the portals they reviewed were hosted by municipalities, not universities, and were created with commercial funding. By comparison, our students would be challenged to create a similar resource with little or no funding.

Armed with their research findings, the team then began developing and designing the portal itself. The students were tasked with the following deliverables:

• Establish the need for the resource portal by mapping the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
• Create the initial concept.
• Design and produce the live portal.
• Gather usage data and assess the portal’s impact.
• Develop a plan to maintain the portal’s currency.

The portal was launched a year later. Today, the platform is an online information gateway that provides entrepreneurs across the Upstate South Carolina region with multiple resources that they need for success. The portal includes a “Connect and Collaborate” function that also gives entrepreneurs from across the U.S. the ability to create accounts to access the site’s resources.

We recognize that the entrepreneurial web portal will always be a work in process, but we view this as a positive dimension, particularly as it relates to student learning. For example, each semester, students in our capstone entrepreneurship course review the portal at length; they assess the portal’s functionality, provide written critiques, and suggest new features and improvements. As a result of their review, the portal already has been updated to make its content accessible in eight different languages. Going forward, we anticipate student members of the USC Upstate chapter of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization also will contribute to maintaining the currency of the portal.

Year after year, the portal will give new students the opportunity to engage in project-based learning that positively impacts the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. They also can use the portal themselves, whether to identify internships or find funding for their own ventures.

An Accelerator for Microentrepreneurs

Our faculty and students interact with entrepreneurs through practical research and consulting projects, as well as partner with businesses through other entrepreneurship initiatives.

One such example is Start:ME Spartanburg, an annual 14-week accelerator program that provides business training, mentorship support, and early-stage financing to aspiring microentrepreneurs, defined as founders of early-stage businesses employing one to four employees. Launched in 2016, the accelerator is based on a model created at Emory University. The aim of Start:ME is to promote economic development in Spartanburg’s Northside community by connecting promising entrepreneurs with the necessary tools, skills, and networks as they develop viable and sustainable businesses.

This program is a joint partnership of the JCBE and the Northside Development Group. Other partners include the Northside Voyagers, a resident leadership team dedicated to the continued growth and betterment of the Northside community, and CommunityWorks, a community development financial institution that promotes financial equity. All play a critical role in supporting Start:ME entrepreneurs.  

Start:ME participants attend weekly sessions, where they complete a business training curriculum focused on helping them develop critical entrepreneurial skills. The program supplements this development with mentoring from experienced local businesspeople. In addition, the members of each year’s cohort vote to select three participants to receive loans of up to 5,000 USD, provided by CommunityWorks.

The Start:ME Spartanburg sessions and most events are held at the JCBE’s campus. One faculty member directs the program, and additional faculty in disciplines such as accounting, marketing, and management serve as mentors and session leaders. Students are also involved—some act as volunteer mentors, while others assist with key events such as Customer Feedback Night and the Community Trade Show.

Over the last seven years, Start:ME Spartanburg has supported microentrepreneurs in businesses related to beauty and fashion, health and wellness, education and childcare, food and beverage, events and media, photography, and professional services. So far, nearly 100 entrepreneurs have graduated, with 97 percent representing Black-owned businesses and 82 percent representing women-owned businesses. Eighty-five percent of these businesses are still in operation, and ten entrepreneurs now have brick-and-mortar retail locations in Spartanburg.

Our Center’s Community-Based Research

An additional component of the JCBE’s innovation and societal impact ecosystem is the Center for Business Analytics and Community Research (CBACR). CBACR is actively engaged with community partners in a variety of ways, and it collaborates with both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. 

For example, CBACR has worked with its partners to conduct data analysis and write reports related to the societal and economic impact of opioid abuse. It has produced research that compares the economic and employment impact of nonprofit organizations in rural communities to those in urban communities. The center also has developed data resources for local leaders and impact agents, as well as generated economic impact reports that it shares with its clients. Some of these resources, including data and short reports, are also being added to the center’s website.

It is critical for business schools to design experiential learning opportunities that allow students to make meaningful contributions to their communities—and to make these activities a core part of their programs.

When possible, CBACR includes both undergraduate and graduate students in its work. Each year, the center recruits approximately three students to assist with data projects. Recently, guided by two faculty mentors, one undergraduate and two graduate students undertook data discovery and cleaning, and then helped develop a dashboard in Tableau that tracks community data related to areas such as public health, civic health, education, the use of natural resources, and the economy.

An especially useful component of this work is that students often present project updates to the center’s clients. This allows students to interact directly with community leaders and learn more about the role of analytics in real-world applications.

Society’s ‘Greatest Asset’

In a 2020 blog post for Duke University’s Center for International Development in Durham, North Carolina, Najm Mohamed, then a digital marketing intern, states that “entrepreneurship plays an important role in changing society, so it makes sense to cultivate, motivate, and remunerate this greatest asset.” As Mohamed puts it, entrepreneurship is a force that can “break the tradition or cultures of society and reduce the dependence on obsolete methods, systems, and technologies.”

If business schools are to move organizations and society forward, past obsolete methods and systems, it is critical that they design experiential learning opportunities that allow students to make meaningful contributions to their communities. Further, they should make these activities a core part of their programs. Instilling impact-oriented mindsets in students isn’t just the right thing to do. For many students, it will be a critical part of their résumés, because many corporations and organizations are looking to hire talent with this mindset, as a way to support their commitment to societal impact.

Universities and colleges can identify relevant experiential learning opportunities through active engagement and communication with local partners. For the JCBE, this engagement led us to focus on entrepreneurship; other schools might find that another direction better suits their missions. But by making project-based learning a priority, we know our business school will see lasting benefits, not the least of which will be having our region view our school as a “force for good.”