Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Ohio Wesleyan Business Students Work with High Schoolers at STEM Forum
More than 55 local high school students participated in a Nov. 14 Entrepreneurship and Innovation STEM Forum at Ohio Wesleyan University, with both OWU professors and business students sharing their knowledge with the guests.
Senior students from the OWU BUS 499 Corporate Strategy course worked with professors Dan Charna and Glenn Bryan to host the high school students at the daylong forum.
During lunch, the OWU business seniors functioned as table facilitators using their understanding of business, entrepreneurship, and strategy to help guide their group to innovate potentially marketable ideas based on some aspect of STEM. Each table then presented their ideas to the larger group.
“The Entrepreneurship and Innovation STEM Forum exemplifies how business theory and knowledge can be used with science and other disciplines to create new disruptive ideas, products, and technologies that better the world,” said Bryan, OWU’s Homer E. White Associate Professor of Business Administration.
In addition to the lunchtime discussion, the high school guests heard three presentations by OWU science faculty as well as a career-focused talk from the OWU Career Connection. The presenters and their topics were:
- “Evolutionary Responses to Urbanization,” by Dustin Reichard, Ph.D., assistant professor of zoology
- “The Real Breaking Bad; How Chemists do Drugs,” by Katherine Hervert-Thomas, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry
- “How Will Plants Grow on Mars,” by Chris Wolverton, Ph.D., professor of botany/microbiology
- “Connecting the Dots,” by Megan Ellis, executive director of the OWU Career Connection
The STEM Forum was presented in collaboration with the Ohio Academy of Science and Believe in Ohio, as well as the OWU Office of Admission, science faculty, and business faculty.