What is Educase
The EduCase Enterprise of the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship is creating new tools that bring entrepreneurship into classrooms across disciplines in liberal arts settings. EduCases highlight the multi-faceted and multidisciplinary issues entrepreneurs face when starting, growing and managing their business. The intent of an EduCase is to bring to life the breadth of the issues and opportunities faced by an entrepreneur, demonstrate entrepreneurs evolve from many different life and academic backgrounds, and that life-long learning (through many different methods and experiences) is essential for entrepreneurial success. With a focus on Midwest entrepreneurs in both small business and nonprofit settings, these case studies are selected to match the likely futures of entrepreneurial oriented students and provide them stories about individuals a lot like them.
The Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University(CSB/SJU) is developing these classroom tools to respond to the new student; the Millennial generation student who is just beginning college. These people, born between 1980 and 2000, have very different characteristics that will change the college classroom. These young people grew up with computers from a very early age. While research continues on this generation just hitting adulthood, the traits of this group have been identified -- team-focused, hands-on, multi-taskers with high levels of media savvy.
The Center is also developing EduCases to respond to the limited supply of current cases about small business entrepreneurs. Cases about privately held small businesses are in short supply as it is more difficult to get the cooperation of a private business owner. With information about large publicly held companies more readily available most cases feature those types of business. Yet entrepreneurial oriented students today are much more likely to be involved in a privately held small business. A recent survey of case registries identified 50 -60 cases with a focus on entrepreneurs. But only 7 of these cases were written within the last 5 years and 3 of those were about businesses in Eastern Europe. More current cases are needed.
Each EduCase is authored by a one or more faculty case writers from CSB/SJU who are able to look across a mix of disciplines to bring to life the issues described in the case. As educators of traditional liberal arts students, the authors appreciate the changing demographic and learning style of the millennial generation. The EduCase format and pedagogical tools will assist faculty to create an engaging and well-guided classroom experience. Using faculty from CSB/SJU, the case production process will itself expand understanding and integration of entrepreneurship into curriculums across these two campuses.
Each case contains an overview of the featured enterprise, an interview with the entrepreneur(s), a description of the current and future issues faced by the operations, a discussion of the ethical issues surrounding the enterprise and individualized modules for specific course application such as marketing, business strategies, environmental issues, public policy and more.