Hand's-on Entrepreneurship
Dunn School's Robert W. Jurgensen entrepreneurship program has provided me and many other students with unique opportunities to learn valuable life skills with a hands-on approach to teaching entrepreneurship. We have done multiple projects teaching the basics of business and entrepreneurship. It has also provided students with opportunities to earn college credits and valuable internships so they can pursue their passions.
My personal favorite project we have done this year was our deep dive into digital marketing and product creation. We learned to create our own student-made products and added them to the real Dunn School Merchandise store. After this, we took a digital marketing course earning a certificate in the process. Applying this newfound knowledge, we began creating ads with our fellow students to target specific demographics within our “Earwig-nation”. In fact, this search engine optimization (SEO) blog post is part of that project and proof of the real impact of the Dunn School entrepreneurship program.
Our student investors have also generated hundreds of thousands of dollars for the program and student scholarships. This money has come completely from student made decisions and investments.
Besides the more technical sides of the RWJ program we also had the opportunity to work in more of a on the ground environment, The Jurgensen's market is our student-managed store. Everyone who takes the Jurgensen's Toolkit class has had the opportunity to work within the market. In the market, every student assumes a different role, for example CEO is in charge of the business for the trimester, the inventory specialist is in charge of making product orders from our suppliers. In this class I learned how to work in a commercial kitchen environment, gained a certificate for food handling, experience taking orders, all things I can now put on a resume and help me to get a job. This student-run business provides a great entry for students to get some experience under their belt before venturing into the real world of business.
Students in the entrepreneurship class last year (2022-2023) even had the opportunity to create their own kombucha brand and sell them for a period of time in the Jurgensen's Market. They worked with a real kombucha manufacturer and had to target a customer archetype.
Dunn School's entrepreneurship program has not only inspired our own students but also other schools. This year, we hosted a regional competition of the Diamond Challenge, an international entrepreneurship challenge for high school students. This event gave other schools from across the globe a small look into our program, hopefully inspiring other schools to provide an entrepreneurship program for their own students.
This blog post was written by Benke Sepulveda '27 as an assignment for the Jurgensen's Toolkit class. He got an A!