At StartupTree, we're dedicated to keeping you up-to-date on what's happening in the entrepreneurship community right now.
Each month, we host our Collective Minds community meet up -- a place for directors, program managers, and other operators of entrepreneurship to gather and discuss challenges and best practices. The Rundown continues to be an easy way to gain quick access to the discussion in these meetings!
💡 Breakdown of what entrepreneurship directors are talking about in August 2022: - Different ways centers track engagement - The benefits of student-led initiatives - Mentorship priorities and tracking program success
_____________
Tracking Engagement
Tracking Engagement
How different institutions track engagement:
How different institutions track engagement:
- Louis Goldish, Senior Advisor at MIT Venture Mentoring Service - all interactions are logged in a database that tracks engagement, and he requests an update report every other month.
- James Bottom, Chairman at Protea Labs/Formerly University of Southern California - tracks newsletter subscribers, opens/clicks, and takes note of the different content that students engage with.
- Hannah Welch, Program Manager for Student Innovation at University of New England - has QR code scans on posters around campus. She also uses sign in on Google Forms, and is interested in progress tracking, or seeing how students are feeling at the beginning versus at the end of their journey to see what students are getting out of the program and help them improve.
- Luis Martinez, Director of Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Trinity University - uses Airtable to track engagement, keeping their tech stack tidy.
- Marcos Hashimoto, Managing Director of Turner School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Bradley University - uses social media to interactively track and promote events and competitions. They respond to student replies on Instagram and include that on their engagement tracking.
- Brandon Reynolds, Director of Competitions and Mentoring at UT Tyler - tracks engagement by using both interactions on StartupTree and also by tracking one-on-one meetings.
- Francisa Reyes, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Blackstone Launchpad at UC Riverside - emphasizes sign-up sheets and follow-ups for events. She also sends an email afterwards thanking them, and inviting them to follow their social media as well as offering mentorship sessions.
- Priscilla James, Program Manager at Baylor University's John F. Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise - tracks student attendance and applications for competitions inside and outside of Baylor, and also sends anonymous surveys to attendees after events.
_____________
Benefits of Student-Led Initiatives
Benefits of Student-Led Initiatives
Student-led initiatives are a powerful tool to use to increase engagement across campus through student-to-student interactions. Through small group discussions, directors and managers shared and collaborated on ways student-first initiatives work at their institutions.
Discussion Topics: 1) Engaging faculty and deans, 2) how ambassadors draw in tons of students, and 3) what student-led engagement looks like across campus
- Niki Peterson (UC Davis)
- Louis Goldish (MIT)
- Kate Collins (Seneca College)
- Jeremy VanAndel (Franklin College)
- Clare Harwood (Texas A&M)
- Becca Brzezinski (St. John’s University)
Discussion Topics: 1) Student interns and assistants to help with operational efficiency and tracking metrics, 2) forming partnerships with related organizations a t their university to create an outlet to piggyback off of and to share ideas and resources, and 3) working with student-run organizations, clubs, and podcasts
- Priscilla James (Baylor University)
- Hannah Welch (University of New England)
- Francisa Reyes (UC Riverside)
- Donnita Raglin (Clark Atlanta University)
- Brittain Elswick (Case Western Reserve University)
Discussion Topics: 1) Benefits of student ambassadors, 2) strategies and tools to engage faculty and get entrepreneurship into the classrooms, and 3) housing multiple centers under one umbrella organization
- Brandon Reynolds (UT Tyler)
- Marcos Hashimoto (Bradley University)
- Stacy Moore (Harris-Stowe State University)
- Ulas Neftci (Baruch College)
Discussion Topics: 1) How to use Canvas, Noodle, Blackboard, and Calendar to track assignments and student appointments, 2) the difficulty of having multiple systems and different data coming from each place, and 3) the success of student ambassador programs
- Luis Martinez (Trinity University)
- James Bottom (University of Southern California)
- Bonnie Hacking (St. Andrews)
- Allen Chen (Columbia University)
_____________
Mentorship Priorities and Tracking Program Success
Mentorship Priorities and Tracking Program Success
Many entrepreneurship institutions have mentorship at the forefront of their program.
Mentorship is extremely valuable for both students and mentors, and the two highest mentorship metric priorities among our community were the number of meetings scheduled (45%) and the number of mentor connections made (45%). Different programs employ different strategies that work for them to increase the success and impact of mentorship.
Many Ways to Track Mentorship:
Many Ways to Track Mentorship:
- Louis Goldish (MIT) oversees a volunteer-based mentorship program, in which he is very involved in making sure that the students have a valuable experience in their mentoring meetings. To track the value of meetings, there is a survey sent out to the students after every meeting, and if the rating is below a certain value, he checks in with the mentor.
- He has seen great success in the volunteer mentor program, and some of the mentors have been involved for over 10 years. There are 190 mentors and 3,000 ventures.
- Kate Collins (Seneca College) supervises a two-step, paid mentorship program. The first step, Innovation, is a foundational set of workshops with coaches. The second step, Acceleration, is where students start working one-on-one with elite mentors, in order to scale their businesses.
- Francisa Reyes (UC Riverside) has 20 mentors from a wide range of industries. Mentors and students track milestones to encourage engagement. They track these milestones in ways that work for them, and not in any fixed or scheduled manner.
- Niki Peterson (UC Davis) has a wide range of mentors (500 on the database but a smaller number that actually engage). They utilize mentorship speed-dating sessions where groups of mentors cycle through bunches of students to find a good fit.
- Luis Martinez (Trinity University) monitors every mentor meeting with a staff member or graduate assisstant to observe mentor/mentee dynamics and the progress of the meetings as a "third-eye" to add nuance and color to their after-meeting reports.
The most popular ways programs verify that meetings are actually happening are self-reporting from mentors (38%) and self-reporting from students (31%), and the two most common ways to track performance of mentors is through feedback from students (46%) and through regular feedback surveys (46%).
_____________
At Collective Minds, our intention is to bring people together in a place on equal footing to share resources and best practices, advise one another, overcome challenges, and celebrate wins together.
Join us at our next meeting to share your thoughts!
