In the last eight years, Lehigh University has trained 560 high school students, including 90 from 44 different countries, at its annual summertime Global Entrepreneurship program as part of the state-funded network of eight Pennsylvania Governor’s Schools. The program worked in concert with Lehigh’s annual Global Village for Future Leaders that brings in young adults from all over the world and transforms the campus into a center of business and entrepreneurship.
Since funding was lost for the Governor’s Schools in the last year, Dick Brandt has worked overtime to help Lehigh save its global entrepreneurship program, widely viewed as a valuable development tool considering the current economic climate. Brandt, director of the school’s Iacocca Institute, Office of International Affairs, found students and parents wanted the former Governor’s School to continue just as much.
“About 40 parents who had students going to other Governor’s Schools wrote us and wanted us to put their children in the application pot for our program,” says Brandt. “I’m pretty encouraged we’ll be OK.”
The state’s Department of Education, which had administered the outreach and application process for students, agreed to let Lehigh take over the task so long as the school admitted 20 percent of the program’s participants from poor school districts throughout the state. The agreement allowed Lehigh to piggyback on its Global Village program, using its administrative resources to handle the additional applications for the former’s Governor’s School, since renamed the Pennsylvania School for Global Entrepreneurship.
By covering management costs, Lehigh was able to subsidize $1,000 of the $3,950 per-student pricetag for PSGE (previously, the state covered the entire cost). Brandt’s team is also responsible for marketing the program among school counselors and statewide Intermediate Units. Once the word out is out, Lehigh should have no problem filling the PSGE’s ranks if conversations with participants’ parents at last summer’s opening ceremony were any indication.
“They basically re-emphasized that in this kind of world arena, entrepreneurship is absolutely key but more important is to understand is how business is done around the world,” says Brandt. “They want their kids to have a leg up in the global context.”
The University of Pittsburgh’s Health Career Scholars Academy is the only other former Governor’s School program to survive.
Source: Dick Brandt, Lehigh University’s Iacocca Institute, Office of International Affairs
Writer: Joe Petrucci