The Challenge for Excellence goes far beyond supporting faculty, creating more scholarships, and supporting immersion learning. Gifts have also helped establish funds to nurture entrepreneurial ideas.
Made possible in part from a gift from the estate of John H. Schroeder, the Schroeder Center for Career Development established SEED Grants. The Supporting Entrepreneurial Enrichment and Development (SEED) Program awards up to $500 to assist students in pursuing a great business or non-profit idea.
“We are working with significantly higher numbers of Wabash students with entrepreneurial interests, and this program helps these students start to turn these interests into reality,” Schroeder Center Director Scott Crawford said. “We believe this institutional support can be invaluable in fostering an entrepreneurial spirit in our students, which is a great complement to their liberal sets education."
One of the first grants went to Justin Taylor '15, Joseph Jackson '14, and Charles Kolisek '14. The students are building a website which will combine recruiting for athletics, the arts, and general academics into one location. Information is managed like a social network allowing students to communicate with college admissions officers or coaches.
The three students used their grant to attend business incubator programs, including the Boston Chapter of the Princeton Entrepreneurship competition where they won third-place honors for new ideas.
Taylor leads the group effort and emphasizes it's not just another project; the three students are building a real business. The three are currently trying to raise funds to get the website built and business up and running.
Taylor explains the project in the video below.
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