Dec. 03--Round Lake High School is launching a new class next fall that aims to help students launch businesses of their own.
The Business Incubator course was one of a handful of new classes the District 116 School Board voted to add to the high school curriculum at a meeting last month.
"I think the kids are going to wow us with their creativity," said Michael Baird, the high school's math and business division chair. "It doesn't get any more real than this."
Over the course of the year, small teams of students will identify a problem and a product or service that solves it, ultimately turning that idea into a viable business.
The end goal? Convince a panel of investors with a "Shark Tank"-style pitch detailing how their plan is worthy of funding -- with real dollars on the line.
Next year, the high school plans to offer two sections of the course with about 25 students each. It will be open to sophomores through seniors, with no prerequisites, Baird said.
A district teacher will work with students day-to-day, but the district will also bring in coaches and mentors from the community with experience in the business world, Baird said.
Coaches would spend two or three days sharing their expertise with students. Mentors will have a more hands-on role, working with one team of students throughout the year to help them prepare for the big pitch. Baird said the district is looking for people willing to help out in both roles.
"We want to help (students) tap into that knowledge right away," he said.
The mentoring and coaching roles are also a chance for community members, who endorsed a 2014 referendum that provided funding for the class, to see what they helped support, Baird said.
A memo from district officials estimated the cost of offering the course at $20,000 to purchase the curriculum, with an additional $5,000 to continue running it each year.
Baird said the cost of the curriculum, along with a Business Incubator Lab -- still under construction but designed to look like a tech startup's office -- will be covered by funds from the referendum.
The curriculum Round Lake will use was created by Barrington Community Unit School District 220, which started an incubator program in 2013, said Hagop Soulakian, who teaches Barrington's incubator course. Round Lake would be the 40th school around the country to adopt the program, Soulakian said.
Kat Mena, 17, a Barrington senior and co-founder of CleatGuard, is in her second year with the program after her team's company won $29,000 in funding last year. Mena and her team are currently working on final designs, prototyping and a patent for their product, a guard athletes can attach to cleats so they can be worn anywhere without slipping.
A more traditional introductory business course Mena took her freshman year was "the most boring thing I'd ever done in my entire life." She'd ruled out business as a career but, after reluctantly giving the incubator course a try, Mena said she now plans to continue working on CleatGuard in college, while studying finance and entrepreneurship.
"It felt really innovative, more like a working environment than school," Mena said. "I encourage people to try it because it's an amazing opportunity to try out so many different aspects of business you might fall in love with."
Soulakian said the incubator is more hands-on than traditional, textbook-based classes and gets students to apply what they're learning.
Helping a Round Lake student launch a successful company would be "a very fun surprise," Baird said, but the real goal is to have students leave with an understanding of exactly what it takes to start their own business and whether it's a route they want to pursue.
For those who do decide entrepreneurship is right for them, "it allows them to see how to focus that energy, apply that skill set, and understand what they need to do to accomplish those big life goals," Baird said.
Soulakian said students who've gone on to study business in college have said they felt better prepared than their classmates, but argued even those who end up outside the business world will benefit.
"It really leads to personal growth in soft skills, whether it's how to present to people, how to work in a group environment, or how to own your own destiny and make things happen," he said.
lzumbach@tribpub.com
