Led by Apex Friendship High School (AFHS) teacher Dan Jackson in collaboration with KIETS Associate Director Raj Narayan, the Applied Synergies Partnership (ASaP) High School Entrepreneurship program enables entrepreneurial and leadership skills in high school students in partnership with the NC State TEC Program faculty in the Poole College of Management. KIETS Associate Director Raj Narayan serves on the board of directors of the ASaP nonprofit established in 2019 and as a mentor to the entrepreneurship students.
Three new cohorts of Honors 1 and Honors 2 entrepreneurship students at Apex Friendship High School began their course of study in Fall 2021 and are completing their business plans for their envisioned projects. In addition, in FY 2021-22, Dan Jackson collaborated with David McNeil a t the NC State Global Entrepreneurship Initiative to deliver an introduction to entrepreneurship for Japanese high school students in March 2022.
Additionally, Dan Jackson has been invited to speak at the upcoming 2022 NC CTE summer conference in Winston-Salem on the topic of implementing Performance Based Mastery in an active-learning, hands-on learning environment. Mr. Jackson has indicated that he will be retiring from his role as a classroom teacher at the end of the 2023 school year but intends to continue to refine the ASaP entrepreneurship curriculum and make it available for other teachers in NC and other states.