Employment trends are rapidly moving away from established corporations with 30-year retirement plans to boutique businesses of a smaller workforce and employee shifting from job to job to a different type of career – self employment and entrepreneurship. Referred to as MADE (Meadowbrook Academy for Digital Entrepreneurship), the program is a guide for creative ideas with a hands-on approach.
Meadowbrook High School has tapped into that trend by adding a new specialty center in addition to its International Baccalaureate Specialty Center. The new center, which is likened more to creating new products, business ideas and creative problem solving, than to specialty centers focusing on other talents that may be more academic, though there has to be academic as well.
“The concept started off about three years ago when we started coming up with the concept of what a new specialty center would be charged with,” said Joseph Farrell, Specialty Center Coordinator. “Our former school board member, Mr. [David] Wyman, said why don’t we do something with entrepreneurship or something business related. From there we got the ball rolling looking at some models of some colleges and the business community and some entrepreneurs who have done business startups.”
This school year is the first year that the preliminary work has come to fruition. Freshman this year were able to apply for the program and Mr. Farrell thinks the program will grow from its current 15 students to possibly over 90 in the next several years.
“The basic philosophy of the main program is a three-step process called idea generation, acceleration and execution. How you develop concepts, how you accelerate them to a point where you can make them a functional operational concept and then how do you execute it and keep it operational,” Ferrell said. “We started off thinking that this would be kind of an e-commerce sort of thing but then e-commerce is sort of dead now.”
Destini Poteat, a member of the specialty center said she is not interested in e-commerce or working with computers. I’m just not that good at it. But she does have a goal that fits right in with the program.
“In the future, I want to own my own business and be my own boss so I just thought I would get into this program,” Ms. Poteat said.
Students enamored with the program find that there are opportunities out there for people with grand ideas and with the help of television programs like “Shark Tank” they can see how success can be attainable with a good idea and hard work. The program can also guide students into a career where the concepts they learn in the program pay off.
“I wanted to be in business, and be my own boss” said student Shamya Rowe. “But it doesn’t necessarily have to happen that way. I could work for someone else, but then I want to have my own spinoff, not necessarily taking their ideas. Maybe just reinventing and making money off my own creation.”
Angel Lee, a member of the inaugural class said, “I wanted to go here because other specialty centers focus on one thing. Like the whole four years they focus on one subject like science or something like that, but with this program we kind of jump around, but we do things that help you find yourself. I chose this because I don’t really know what I want to do. So I chose this to find myself and now I know I want to my own boss and be an entrepreneur.”
The program is a four-year program and Farrell said each year has a different focus. But he said this year is e-commerce, next is idea-generation and so forth. But they all take English together and different classes interrelate to one another such as finance.
“Of course I will stay all four years, I’ve already accomplished a lot and I’ve made a lot of progress and I wouldn’t want to stop now,” Sequoia Lawson said.
Sequoia was originally nominated for the National Association of Woman Business Owners, the University of Richmond Student Entrepreneur Award so she’s one of three finalists. Farrell said, who boasts the accomplishments of his students. Farrell said all the five ladies who were interview have accomplished a lot.
“My predecessor is responsible for a second specialty center here and it’s kind of evolved with the ideas of Mr. Farrell and Ms. Lee (administrator of MADE) but the students are really the stars of the program and the brainchild behind it is these folks,” said Dale District School Board Member John Erbach, sweeping his hand around the table of students and the centers coordinators.
Erbach said he thinks that the program is unique. “I was at the National School Board Association Conference and I was watching out for the type of things that are being done here and most of the school systems who have specialty centers do sort of a leadership program, an engineering program like we have at Bird, but I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
As the program was formed, Karen Lee said the program had turned around maybe three or four times.
“In that time Mr. Ferrall has reached out to the business community, higher ed and as people have heard more and more of what we’re doing they are seeking him out.” Lee said. “Where we are today is a direct reflection of what Mr. Ferrall has put together. When we hear how the business world is saying that entrepreneurship is part of everything, we are positioning our students at the ninth grade level to be a player in that.”
