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June 2005 ASEE Conference Session 1410

Implementing Technical Entrepreneurship as a Required Junior Course for all Students at Northwestern Lehigh High School Bryan Klass Leah Christman Futures II Instructor Instructional Technology Facilitator Northwestern Lehigh High School Northwestern Lehigh School District

John B Ochs Professor and Director of the Integrated Product Development (IPD) Program Lehigh University

Abstract Futures II is a multidisciplinary, standards based, technology enabled graduation requirement for all eleventh graders at Northwestern Lehigh High School implemented in the spring 2003 and fall 2004 semesters. In this semester-long course, students create and run real businesses using a project based learning model and following Pennsylvania’s academic standards for career awareness and planning, career acquisition, career retention and entrepreneurship. Our primary goal at Northwestern Lehigh High School was to create a program that helps students meet the individual, family, work and community challenges in today’s complex, technology infused, global society. We offer this work as a possible model for others to follow. This course is a partnership with Lehigh University’s Integrated Product Development Program and Wilkes University’s Entrepreneurship Program. The Northwestern Lehigh model for entrepreneurship maps PA standards for career pathways onto the divisions of the startup company including a) arts and humanities mapped to design and marketing, b) business and communication to marketing and finance, c) engineering and industrial technology to production, and d) health and human services to human resources, safety, health and legal issues. Students form their own companies with president, division heads and team members. They search out product ideas; perform market research, product research and development. They identify their customers and market their products and /or services through the school’s morning TV show and fliers throughout the school and surrounding community. The company’s board of directors must pitch the idea to the faculty and administration, woo investors, develop their budgets, monitor cash flow, pay bills and disperse profits. This paper will describe the course, the course objectives and goals, the implementation, how administrative roadblocks were removed and describe the course assessment approach, the lessons learned and plans for the 2004-2005 school year.

Keywords: Standards, Entrepreneurship, Careers, Integration, Technology, K-12, Partnerships, Collaboration, Distance Learning, Problem/Product Based Learning

I. Introduction, Background and Rationale A. Describe the initiative and educational partners. In 2003 the Center for Advancing Partnerships in Education (CAPE), a consortium of K- 20 educational and non-profit institutions in eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey, funded a joint project with Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA and Northwestern Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Ochs, J. (2005, June), Implementing Technical Entrepreneurship As A Required Junior Course For All Students At Northwestern Lehigh High School Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--14528