Entrepreneurship course helps Bucher define her passion
by anna rzewnicki
February 11, 2008
Student nominates Entrepreneurship Education Initiative director for national Acton Award
Lauren Bucher is graduating this spring from NC State’s College of Management with a bachelor’s degree in business management and a minor in finance.
She’s one of the lucky students who knew before the start of school last fall that she had a job waiting for her at the end of her senior year.
She’s also fortunate in another way: she’s found something that she is passionate about: entrepreneurship.
Bucher will be working for Wachovia in internal audit when she graduates; that’s the unit where she completed an 11-week internship last fall.
“I had a really great time working with the wealth and management team and at the end of August, they offered me a position and I accepted,” Bucher said.
Back on campus last fall, one of her senior year classes was the college's capstone entrepreneurship course. [It is part of the college's minor in entrepreneurship, and will be part of the college's new concentration in entrepreneurship for students in its bachelor's in business administration degree program, beginning in fall 2008.]
Bucher said that she was so impressed with her instructor’s teaching style that she nominated him for the national Acton Foundation Excellence in Entrepreneurship Education award.
“The entrepreneurship award was for outstanding professors who had really pioneered a way through entrepreneurship education,” Bucher said. “After seeing the classes he helped form at NC State and also taking the minor class with him last semester, I was really moved to continue seeking entrepreneurial activities everywhere I went.”
Based on her nomination, Gary Palin, director of the Entrepreneurship Education Initiative at the college, was named one of the 27 entrepreneurship faculty across the country to receive the award.
He and Bucher attended a conference Feb. 1 and 2, at which the award was presented. At the conference, Bucher attended several workshops and discussions with other entrepreneurship educators and students who had nominated the other award recipients.
Palin’s approach to entrepreneurship education “has really helped us break the mold of traditional education," she said.
"Generally, professors - and throughout high school as well - have given us a puzzle, and then given us the pieces to solve the puzzle. So all of the resources that we needed were available and in front of us and it made it very easy to learn," Bucher said.