Apex Friendship High School teacher Dan Jackson has been collaborating with KIETS Associate Director Raj Narayan to develop the Applied Synergies Partnership (ASaP) Entrepreneurship Leadership Program focused on enabling entrepreneurial analytical skills in his high school students.
In collaboration with Narayan and the NC State TEC Program faculty in the Poole College of Management, Jackson participated as an “educator-in-residence” with the TEC program to distill the TEC program pedagogy for utilization in his honors entrepreneurship course. Jackson worked closely with Narayan to develop a clinical education program for his high school students based on the TEC program model. ASaP engaged more than 40 professionals partners throughout the 2017 fall semester from diverse companies such as SAS, Biogen, Citrix, and others. Local industry executives and advisors including Narayan and Kenan Fellow LaTanya Pattillo mentored 57 students to help them develop business plans that were submitted for competition in the NC DECA Career Development Conference.
KIETS also hosted students to visit NC State University including the Hunt Library, Poole College of Management, HQ Raleigh, Albright Village and Entrepreneurship Garage, and NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic. Moreover, student teams who were finalists for the state DECA competition were also invited to present their business plans at the TEC program in preparation for their competitions. The result of this effort has been to develop an experiential entrepreneurial pedagogical model aligned with the NC Standard course of study, which culminated in the DECA State competition.
Of the 24 teams that participated in the fiscal year 2017-18, 18 teams competed at the state competition and 13 teams were invited to the international competition in Atlanta, GA. Moreover, 100 percent of the students who participated in the program in 2017 and took the state-mandated end-of-course-assessment met or exceeded the test proficiency levels. KIETS support helped some of the students in financial need attend the international competition in Atlanta and Institute support was leveraged with additional support from the Wake County Public School system, Hutch Law, West Cary Wellness, Apex Imports, and Bovenizer.
KIETS also organized a meeting in March 2018 sharing program results with stakeholders including the NC Department of Public Instruction, TIE Carolinas, NC Real Entrepreneurship, Wake County Public School System, Sequoyah Fund, Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership, and the Rural Center to investigate the potential for a similar program in rural areas. Follow the link below for more information on the program.
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