The EntreEd K-14: Every Student, Every Year program is a regional effort to drive entrepreneurship education in Appalachia. The program, funded through a three-year grant by the Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER (Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization) funding, seeks to establish and strengthen relationships between K-12 schools and local community colleges to ensure participating schools deliver entrepreneurship education to every student in the building each school year. Schools that complete this requirement will earn supportive stipends and the school designation as one of “America’s Entrepreneurial Schools.”
The program serves distressed, coal-impacted counties throughout Appalachia. Seven community colleges have been identified to assist K-12 schools in their service areas with implementation of entrepreneurship activities. The seven colleges include: BridgeValley CC, Southern CC, New River CC, Southeast CC, Hazard CC, Big Sandy CC, and Mountain Empire CC.
The lead organization for the grant is EntreEd, the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education. Project partners include The National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE), Behavioral Business, LLC, and The EdVenture Group. Behavioral Business and NACCE will play a large role in engaging and organizing the community college partners. The EdVenture Group will deliver professional development workshops focused on entrepreneurship for all participating K-12 schools. Two regional coordinators, Toi Hershman and Melony Denham, will act as liaisons between community college and K-12 to strengthen relationships and ensure each school completes entrepreneurship education for every student, every year.
The first meeting of all project partners and the participating community colleges occurred on February 17, 2017 in Charleston, WV. This meeting was designed to introduce community college partners to the program and educate them on the expectations of their involvement. The meeting took place at the Advanced Technology Center at BridgeValley Community and Technical College, one of the participating colleges.
“Entrepreneurship education in schools throughout the region will provide more career opportunities for students and encourages a more entrepreneurial culture in communities,” said Gene Coulson, Executive Director of EntreEd.
Story provided by: BSCTC