The Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan, in partnership with the School of Art & Design, offers two unique courses that explore pressing social needs through the design of innovative responses and how they effect change through entrepreneurial thinking.
Social Entrepreneurship Courses
Acumen Fund @ UM: Leading Innovation through Social Entrepreneurship
In this course, students will learn a theoretical framework for social entrepreneurship and design thinking, as well as explore the individual skills and will necessary to respond to complex social needs both locally and globally. We will take an in depth look at Acumen Fund's work in bringing innovations for limited resource settings to market, drawing upon the organization's 10 years of experience investing capital and training high-impact leaders.
Students will be placed on interdisciplinary teams throughout the course to engage in hands-on activities, case studies, competitions, and a leadership project. Open to all disciplines at the undergraduate level.
Acumen Fund, a leading global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty, has officially partnered with the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship to develop this introductory course on leadership and social enterprise.
Course Details:
- Class Time: Mon 3:00pm-4:30pm
- Term: Fall 2011
- Credits: 1.5
- Course Number: ENGR 390.002
Design for Change
In this project-based class, students will respond to pressing social needs through design thinking processes, including visioning, concept generation, sketching ideas, everyday ethnography, creative experimentation, and extensive prototyping and validation. Students will form interdisciplinary teams to work on actual entrepreneurial design projects focused on food, education, health care and income issues facing our community partners.
As part of the course, students will meet together with ENGR 390.002 Innovation through Social Entrepreneurship in order to acquire the theoretical frameworks and skills necessary for undertaking a social enterprise. They will then use those tools to design and develop their own ideas for a social venture that creates possibilities, products and systems in response to real world problems.
Note: Students enrolled in ARTDES 314.001 will meet concurrently with ENGR 390.002 on Mondays so there is no need to register for both.
Course Details:
- Class Time: Mon 3:00pm-4:30pm | Wed 1:30pm-4:30pm
- Term: Fall 2011
- Credits: 3
- Course Number: ARTDES 314.001
Engineers Making a Difference
Engineers, with their capacity to apply knowledge and solve problems possess the potential to profoundly influence on our world. With this power comes a responsibility that is not matched by many other careers paths. In this section of Engineering 100, we explore the responsible practice of engineering by addressing a global challenge for a local community. In Fall 2010, the course challenge was world hunger.
One seventh of the world's population is hungry - over 1 billion people. Each year, hunger claims the lives of as many people as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Yet, as a world, we produce enough grain to provide over 3500 calories to each person every day. Hunger isn't a problem isolated in the developing world - hunger can affect our closest neighbors. To address this need, the class worked with a local non-profit to improve capacity in a local community for the development of affordable and nutritious food sources to battle urban hunger and malnutrition.
Course Details:
- Class Time: TBD
- Term: Fall 2011
- Credits: 4
- Course Number: ENGR 100:800
Social Venture Creation Practicum
Are you working on an innovative social project/idea? Or are you interested in partnering with other UM social entrepreneurs on implementing a social innovation in either a domestic and international market? If so, you should apply for the Social Venture Creation Practicum.
In this course, you will take steps to launch and implement a social innovation. By the end of this course, student teams submit an implementation plan and make a presentation to a panel of industry experts and potential funders. The course heavily applies a customer discovery framework and process.
The hope is that the students will be able to implement innovations that can make real, long-lasting social impact. Open to all disciplines at both the undergraduate and graduate level. It is highly recommended to take ENGR 390.002 concurrently or another CFE core course prior to enrollment.
By application only: http://cfe.engin.umich.edu/forms/biz_idea
Course Details:
- Class Time: Fri 10am-noon
- Term: Fall 2011
- Credits: 3
- Course Number: ENGR 411.002