In February, two faculty members from Temple University’s Fox School of Business traveled to Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia to help launch a new innovation and enterprise program they helped create. The program is part of a three-year partnership between the two universities to deliver customized entrepreneurship and innovation education to Flinders students, and this visit marks the first delivery of curricula after nearly two years of preparation.
Dr. TL Hill, Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the Fox School and Managing Director of Fox Management Consulting, and Michelle Histand, Adjunct Professor at the Fox School, are among the Fox School faculty members developing content for the new program. They spent two weeks at Flinders University working with faculty and observing classes to provide real-time guidance and support. Their visit coincided with orientation week, during which they spoke with students to promote and the program and generate enthusiasm, and met with administration members to deepen the relationship between the two universities. Hill’s course, called a topic in Australia, is an elective on Social Entrepreneurship, and Histand’s Creative Thinking and Innovation course is required for incoming freshman.
The new courses offer students real-world, hands-on opportunities, which differs from the usual classroom lecture-based teaching approach, according to Histand, and so far, the courses are receiving positive feedback from students. A fundamental difference between the two universities is that Australian students are not required to attend classes; nevertheless, students have been attending and actively participating, and all of the course sections are registered to capacity.
“We hope students get a different learning perspective from these classes and think about alternate career paths they hadn’t thought of before,” she said. “We want to create excitement and drive to get students to class and make them employable at the end [of the program].” Histand highlighted the importance of on-campus collaboration opportunities between the two universities, which strengthened their relationship and made collaboration more seamless.
The Fox-Flinders partnership builds on the success of both organizations’ efforts to support entrepreneurship. Fox’s expertise in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education has been widely recognized: The Online MBA program at the Fox School of Business is ranked No. 1 in the nation for the third consecutive year by US News & World Report, both the graduate and undergraduate Entrepreneurship programs at Fox are ranked among the top 10 by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine, and Fox MC has provided consulting services to nearly 150 startups and early stage companies.
“Fox MC and others at the Fox School of Business, including the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute and faculty in the Strategic Management Department, have been studying and teaching entrepreneurship for quite some time. Fox is well-positioned to help Flinders cultivate a dynamic entrepreneurship program that prepares students for the future,” Hill said.
Fox Management Consulting develops customized entrepreneurship education programs to support entrepreneurs, government and nonprofit organizations, service-providers, and students.
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