Benefits of School-Based Enterprises

School-based Enterprises (SBEs) like Wolverine Enterprises LLC help to connect students to opportunities with hands-on training and business experience. Indiana has more than a dozen schools that offer students SBE experiences and Ascend is meeting with many of them to learn what ingredients are needed to make these programs a success.

Ascend’s Manager of Talent Engagement, Christy Linn, has been on the forefront of this information-gathering journey and provides some of her biggest takeaways in her early conversations with students and educators:

1. Learning Soft Skills

SBEs teach students soft skills, such as effective conflict resolution, communication and time management. “Students are picking up skills that they won’t necessarily learn just from the classroom,” Christy says.

2. Community Support

Schools often receive community support, whether that is through funding or through projects that the students design and/or manufacture. “One southern Indiana school received significant funding from a private donor to support their SBE program, which is uncommon. Another school corporation was gifted a generous donation to run their storefront SBE.” Additionally, one SBE has formed a mutually beneficial partnership with a company by printing their corporate swag. The company provides the SBE with software to help streamline their business processes at a discounted rate.

3. Building Business Plans

Students who run School-based Enterprises learn how to build a business plan, from proposal writing to balancing the books. It’s a great hands-on experience for students to learn the ins and out of running a business, Christy said. For example, students who ran a taco business realized they didn’t make a profit because they put too much meat in the tacos, eating away at their profit.

4. Creativity

Students’ ideas and creativity are on full display across the various SBEs. “These kids’ creativity is crazy. At one school, students built a can crusher, and an engineering company heard about it and the company brought in their engineers to check it out. The engineers were amazed that these students built their own air compressor. Another set of students asked if they could start a culinary program, so they reached out to a local company that cooks lunch meat. The students presented the capabilities of their SBE, and the company awarded them funding to do their culinary program.”

To learn more about School-based Enterprises focused on the advanced manufacturing industry, check out the School-based Enterprise web page on Conexus Indiana’s website here.

If you are interested in learning more about School-based Enterprises and how you can support a local high school, or if you would like to share your SBE best-practices with us, please contact Christy (christy.linn@ascendindiana.com).