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To: All of the faculty who teach courses that are part of the Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation - or - who were faculty sponsors of E&I Experience Options during academic year 2016-2017 I want to thank everyone for their continued support of the E&I Options Program<https://entrepreneurship.msu.edu/experiences/>. The program cannot work without the cooperation of faculty, so thank you! We now have two semesters under our belt. Across the two semesters we logged about 50 E&I Experiences, although 20 of them were from students who participated in Startup Weekend in November. I have attached a list of all of the E&I Experiences that were completed this year (others were proposed and rejected). Eventually the list will be online at: https://msu.startuptree.co/discover/projects. Meantime, if you have any comments about the projects, I heartily welcome them. We now have well over 400 students enrolled in the Minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and we require each student to complete two E&I Experiences (although any student, even if they're not in the Minor, can participate). Most of the students who graduated last week were exempt from this requirement, so I expect the numbers to go up A LOT next year. The program has to be able to accommodate, anticipating 500 students in the E&I Minor, something approaching 250/year. And students need to do their Experiences in courses that are NOT electives in the Minor. Most of the projects this year were initiated by students. What we learned is that, by and large, the program works pretty well EXCEPT when students foist the program on their instructors without properly explaining, or documenting, the program. This is particularly noticeable when they're trying to get it done quickly as part of a graduation requirement. To address this, over the summer we will be refreshing the documentation and launching a series of refinements in the Fall that will make it a LOT easier for students to document their projects and for faculty to understand what to expect. The Provost would like to see us scale the program significantly, and the only way we can effectively do that is to make it VERY easy for faculty to participate. We will be publishing templates and best practices, among other things. Plus, over time, students will become more familiar with the program's requirements. And starting in the Fall we'll be offering an undergraduate seminar course in entrepreneurship which will give us an unparalleled opportunity to make sure that students understand the program. Last summer we had a gathering of all of the instructors who teach courses in the E&I Minor, and everyone found the discussion and networking to be highly beneficial. The opportunity to kick around ideas with colleagues in other colleges seemed to be very well received. So we're going to do it again this summer! We're going to have two meetings on Tuesday, August 22nd: * From 1:30-2:30: For all faculty who are somewhat new to this and want an overview of the E&I Options Experience program and information about how to add it to their coursework and/or support students who request it. * 2:30-4:00pm: An information sharing discussion for those faculty who teach one of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation electives (although anyone is welcome). The location will be in the Broad College of Business although we don't have an exact room yet. Please save the time/date on your calendar. I will send out another reminder in a few weeks, with a room number, and you can RSVP then. I welcome ANY opportunity over the summer to meet with you or your departments to fully explain the program and brainstorm about ways that you can leverage it. Please let me know if you'd like to schedule a time. Again, thank you for your support. Neil Kane Director of Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Michigan State University 632 Bogue Street, Room N120 East Lansing, MI 48824 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Cell: 312-404-3507 Entrepreneurship Portal: http://entrepreneurship.msu.edu<http://entrepreneurship.msu.edu/> Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MSUEship/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSU_Eship LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/neilkane Going from "Why I can't" to "Why can't I?"