COSTA MESA, CA, — Base 11 and the National Association of Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) have formed a partnership to help community colleges better prepare the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.
“NACCE is delighted to partner with organizations that offer cutting-edge and user friendly tools and resources that help college leaders and faculty promote innovation and entrepreneurship on campuses and in communities,” said Rebecca Corbin, Ed.D., President & CEO of NACCE. “We are proud to celebrate our new partnership with Base 11 that offers a variety educational resources and trainings in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) area. We believe that the resources made available through this partnership will help colleges to better prepare students for educational and workforce success and meet growing employer needs in the STEM area.”
Base 11 is a nonprofit STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) workforce and entrepreneur accelerator with several programs to help community colleges expand and enhance their educational offerings around entrepreneurship.
These include helping community colleges establish Innovation Centers that feature Fab Labs – short for fabrication laboratory – originated at MIT. The Fab Labs include equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters to enable users to design and build almost anything they can imagine.
At last count, 30 community colleges had registered Fab Labs with the US Fab Lab Network – and the number keeps growing. But as more colleges add these types of makerspaces, they are also realizing that simply providing the equipment is not enough to foster innovation. They need a strategy to help students get the most out of the resources and instill the entrepreneurial mindset so critical to success in the innovation economy.
“Base 11 helps community colleges integrate their makerspaces into an overall educational program,” said Olenka Cullinan, director of Base 11’s STEM Entrepreneur program and an expert in training youth to become business leaders. “We can help colleges provide essential entrepreneurial education to students that will actually fuel innovation and business growth in their surrounding communities.”
That’s where Base 11’s STEM Entrepreneur program, a 16-week turn-key curriculum, comes into play. The STEM Entrepreneur program not only teaches students to use the equipment in the Fab Lab and build a digital portfolio, but it also covers the entrepreneurial mindset, 21st century leadership skills, marketing and sales strategies, how to develop a business plan and how to secure funding. The program culminates with a pitch contest, and winners from each campus advance to a national competition.
Base 11 trains the college’s faculty and staff to teach the course, which includes content from New York Times bestseller and immediate past publisher of SUCCESS Magazine Darren Hardy.
Earlier this year, Base 11 launched a Fab Lab at Skyline College in San Bruno, Calif., and is currently offering its STEM Entrepreneur curriculum on the campus this semester.
Through NACCE, Base 11 will also offer training sessions to help community college leaders design, fund and implement an overall STEM Accelerator program that wraps around a makerspace; explore funding and grant options for sustainability, and attract high-potential, low-resource students into the programs.
Base 11’s first workshop with NACCE will be at the national conference Sunday Oct. 9, 2016.
About NACCE
The National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) is an organization of educators, administrators, presidents and entrepreneurs, focused on inciting entrepreneurship in their community and on their campus. NACCE has two main goals: 1. Empower the college to approach the business of running a community college with an entrepreneurial mindset, and 2. Grow the community college’s role in supporting job creation and entrepreneurs in their local ecosystem. Follow us at @NACCE, like us on facebook.com/NACCE, and join our LinkedIn group. More: http://www.nacce.com/
Base 11 is a non-profit focused on empowering high-potential, low-resource community college students with hands-on education and training in STEM-related enterprises. Base 11 partners with community colleges and their feeder high schools to provide high-potential, low-resource students with real-world training, experience and mentorship in STEM-related enterprises, delivering to employers a prerecruitment pipeline of well-trained, highly skilled STEM employees and entrepreneurs. For more information, please visit www.Base11.com. Base 11 is a DBA of the Center for Innovations in Education, a non-profit 501(c) 3 – IRS exemption EIN# 26- 4365936.