As social entrepreneurship gains popularity nationwide and on campus, the Rockefeller Center has gained approval for a new course and created a new position that will expand its offerings in the field. Social entrepreneurs, like their counterparts in business, seek to find innovative solutions, but focus their energies on problems affecting the public good.
The center will offer a 30-student public policy class focused on social entrepreneurship for the first time this summer, taught by director Andrew Samwick. Samwick said the class, approved on Thursday, will allow students to create real start-up projects.
He said he hopes the center will help students develop start-ups into enterprises with national or even global potential.
In January, the Rockefeller Center created a new position focusing on design and entrepreneurship co-curricular programs, a role filled by the center’s former program coordinator Thanh Nguyen. In his new job, he will focus on developing social entrepreneurship and public policy innovation on campus, areas the center has not emphasized in the past.
Samwick said he created the position to promote new ideas and projects on big issues in public policy. Some policy challenges, like health care, poverty and education, can only be effectively approached in entrepreneurial ways.
Nguyen will also organize a two-day crash course on innovation and social entrepreneurship that will be held for the second time this summer, he said.
Social entrepreneurship, an emerging field, has gained prominence in business and higher education, and has stirred student interest.
Katherine Crane ’16, a student involved with the center, said social entrepreneurship can improve collaboration among public and private enterprises. She added that it can show students that business and social good can be combined.
Mahnum Shahzad ’15, who participated in the center’s management and leadership development program, said she believes that, too often, people focus on leadership in business rather than in public service.
“In my definition of leadership, it is something that must be placed in the context of helping your community,” she said. “People’s views of leadership have become very contorted and focused solely on the financial sector.”
Developing and promoting social entrepreneurship on campus will give students new ways to apply their leadership skills, she said.
This initiative comes as College President Phil Hanlon has publicized his hopes for expanding entrepreneurship at Dartmouth. Other recent events and newly created offices on campus have also added to the array of opportunities for entrepreneurially-minded students.
Crane said she is interested to see how Nguyen will work with the Innovation Center and New Venture Incubator, a student entrepreneurship hub slated to open this spring. The center is overseen by the entrepreneurship and technology transfer office, which was established last April.
At the Neukom Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation Lab’s student-focused entrepreneurship competition in January, a socially-minded startup was among the finalists. The venture, named RICE2 BioSurveillance, would enable real-time monitoring of disease outbreaks in northern Vietnam.
Last spring’s annual Dartmouth Ventures event, a daylong entrepreneurship conference and competition hosted by the Tuck School of Business, focused on creating social value.
The interdisciplinary nature of social entrepreneurship will allow Nguyen to increase collaboration with other campus organizations like the Tuck, the Thayer School of Engineering, the Dickey Center, the Tucker Foundation and the Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation Lab, he said.
Students will use campus resources to ease design and technology demands, Samwick said. He said that he hopes the hands-on learning opportunity will bridge the gap between theory and practice on campus.
