ENTR 446 – E6Change Leadership, Winter 2020
Over the course of joining the entrepreneurship minor I have grown a lot in my ability to, well, put ideas to impact. Before entering the minor I was much less hands on than I am now, and the minor has shown me how easy it can be to set up interviews with the right people, create prototypes, and pitch ideas. A few years ago you couldn’t have paid me enough money to give a five minute presentation in front of my peers. Though I still don’t want to do that, I am much more comfortable with public speaking and that is something I value.The other aspect of entrepreneurship that I feel like I have gained the most from is confidence in pursuing interviews and opportunities. Without being given a goal of doing something I don’t know if I would have ever had the confidence to interview people like the head of the DAC, the Registrar, and businesses owners in the community. Everyone tells me that I should be proud of the work I have done to create a DS program at Western and in the end the only reason I chose to pursue that was due to wanting to make change through the ENTR program.
What is the dream of your future with E&I? DescribeEntrepreneurship has shown me that I can seriously put something together in a team or by myself. I plan to use the disability studies work I’ve done over the past year to get into graduate school and even possibly continue working here at Western for a salary. I may also travel back to Costa Rica at some point in time as I truly enjoyed my time there. As someone who studies Latin American politics, having the opportunity to travel to Latin America and participate in such and engaging program was something I will value forever. Applying the study of disability to Latin America is a far reaching goal of mine. Given how difficult it can be to get around Western’s campus in a wheelchair, I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to advocate for oneself in many Latin American countries. In the future I would like to work with disability in Latin America, though this is a far reaching goal of mine.
What are 3-5 ways you could go from here to there? Describe in enough detail so you could make these happen.1. I would like to get my Masters in Disability Studies in the next year and a half. This will allow me much greater career opportunities as well as give me more knowledge than I have now on disability in society.2. Eventually, I would like to get my PhD in Disability Studies. The school I would like to go to is from the University of Chicago, and much like the MA program, is one of the only one’s in the country. I find it so interesting how few of these disability studies programs there are sometimes.3. Thirdly, I would like to learn to speak better Spanish. I would like to do this by either going to a community college, like Whatcom, after I graduate from WWU or pursue online programs to help one learn languages. A large barrier to helping anyone or establishing anything in a new region is communication. Much of the world speaks Spanish and not English so I would like to learn how to speak better Spanish to be able to better navigate Latin American countries.A write up of the results of your program level Appreciative Inquiry. This can be done with your partners.
What strengths and sparks of strength did you identify? DescribeAmy talked about how entrepreneurship made her feel “smarter” in that it pushed her to get results and find things out even if she didn’t think that she could. I feel this is a strength of the program as well; high standards coupled with lots of free time to do things if you choose to. Connor talked about networking and how ENTR had allowed him to reach out to people he may not have been able to otherwise. Connor believes the networks he has created through this program will be useful in the future for his goals of getting employment. Soleia talked about pitching and how her skills in performing in front of a crowd have gotten better. I totally agree with Soleia in this sense. Even though I am still so nervous to pitch I am certainly much better at the practice than I used to be.
What is your dream for the program? Describe”[I would like to see a] [c]onsistent VP2 where the local businesses gain some investment from working with the E&I program.” (Connor G) I agree with Connor; it would be great to see more sustained collaboration between businesses in the community and the ENTR program. Collectively, E6’s would like to see more organization across the program in terms of the amount of confusion some people have. One thing that I have personally noticed is that students in ENTR often bond a lot over merely being confused about what to do sometimes.
What are 3-5 ways we could go from here to there? Describe in enough detail so we could make these happen.
1. One way to increase collaboration between businesses and the ENTR program would be to reach out to the businesses that we work with afterwards to see how much our efforts to help them have panned out. Maybe being able to work with these companies in building their businesses over years would bring more community collaboration to ENTR.
2. In terms of reducing confusion in the minor, students I talked to think that consistency is key for this. With change every quarter students are often expecting one thing and getting another. “Are we dancing on day one or not?”. People come to ENTR because of the good things they hear and expect the same cool things when they take it.
3. One problem with increasing consistency is the lost solidarity that students feel from being able to collectively be confused about the program. In hindsight, this might be the reason I feel like I’m friends with so many of my peers in the program. To prevent this, I would suggest that the teaching team continue to put people on their toes while continuing to make the program consistent. I believe it’s possible to have both consistency and sporadicness which are, in the end, the reason that people love our program.