Month: December 2015

While Grove City College has a wide array of majors and fields of study, one that particularly stands out and offers students some interesting and unique opportunities, is the area of Entrepreneurship.

VentureLab, which is a program offered to the entire campus community through Grove City’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, allows students to explore business ideas with funding raised by the college for this purpose. Students submit their ideas to Center, and, if chosen, enter the VentureLab program which gives them the opportunity to test the viability of their ideas and receive mentorship and guidance from professors, alumni and local business professionals. Students remain in the program for the better part of the academic year.

Last year, entrepreneurship majors Ashley Henderson and Haley Nerlich, who developed an idea called LunchTime, were the only social enterprise team accepted to the VentureLab program. LunchTime proposed taking advantage of a federally funded program that provides money for lunches during the summer to needy children. They found that while the funding existed for kids in Venango County, the delivery system did not. LunchTime created a delivery system in rural communities that would bring lunches to children that may not otherwise get food. The idea came from Haley’s summer experience in volunteering at her mom’s nonprofit company, with whom they later ended up partnering. Haley took this idea and joined forces with Ashley to successfully implement their plan into a real life, feasible business.

Through the funding of the VentureLab, they were able to set up twenty six locations including churches, playgrounds, and schools where a large number of children needing this type of program lived. Determining the optimal locations took a lot of hard work and dedication. They sent out over seven thousand forms to parents asking for addresses so they could create map out ideal serving locations to reach the maximum number of children.

As the end of the school year neared, Haley took over the project as Ashley went on to complete an internship at Two Men and a Truck. Haley, with additional support of her mom, was able to set up the 26 needed sites that were serviced by 33 employees and 15 volunteers. Fifty-five days later, LunchTime surpassed Haley’s original goal and distributed over 20,000 meals.

Although the hard work is credited to Ashley, Haley, and the members of the LunchTime staff, the opportunity afforded by the VentureLab and Entrepreneurship program at Grove City College helped to lay the groundwork.

“The Entrepreneurship Department sets you up to do the things they are teaching you in a safe environment,” reflects Ashley.

Through these different programs, students are able to take the lessons they are learning in class and put them to the test in a real world scenario that can lead to a successful business. Because this lab is done in a safe environment, students minimize some of the risks that a lot of business startups face. “The program itself is created so you can do these things we talk about every day in class and not have to be worried about losing investors or equity,” says Ashley.

For Ashley and Haley, the VentureLab allowed them to not only launch their own business, but also to help a community in need.

Politics. The word conjures a feeling of complexity. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a variation of “I don’t even know, it’s too complicated” in response to political current events. However, this response will not suffice for much longer. As college students, politics is transforming from something we learned in our text books while in high school into something that affects the “real world” in which we will work and raise our families.

This was the concern of a group of students at Grove City College. Political science majors David Kirk, Bryan Denny, Brooke Dymski, Jamieson Weaver and Christina Vilbert saw a problem in our society. There were news sources that spoke to millennials and there were news sources that aimed to simplify political news, but there lacked a news source that combined both. Upon this realization, the website Streamline was born.

Still in its beginning stages, Streamline aims to be a non-profit organization that partners with donors of older generations who value its worthy cause. Streamline will provide an online, un-biased, concise news source for millennials to become engaged and interested in politics. One of the many advantages that Streamline has over other new sources is that it is led by millennials themselves who understand the overwhelming nature of current events. In turn, Streamline will do the hard work for their readers by summarizing pertinent political news in an engaging way, choosing both topics and examples that apply to millennials.

Furthermore, the brilliant idea of Streamline is a great reminder of the power of ambition and creativity. Freshman year, the crew of Streamline would never have guessed their idea would stand where it is now. Now, a little over 2 years later, Streamline has been awarded Grove City College’s Venture Lab and will be funded to become a legitimate business that, hopefully, will carry far past graduation. Their success is an inspiration to other Grove City College students to work with their fellow students, to foster creativity, to build upon one another’s strengths, and to build upon an idea that will benefit others.