Entrepreneurial Practicum

This practicum focuses on entrepreneurial and hence product oriented work. The ENGR 490-094: Practicum is designed to gain first-hand experience in entrepreneurship by advancing an idea towards an entrepreneurial goal, or by getting involved in an entrepreneurial environment. The expected work volume of the practicum is estimated to be equivalent to 9-12 hours per week for a 14-week time-period. There are two ways to fulfill this program requirement: Pursue an Entrepreneurial Project or a Start-Up Internship.

The first and preferred option is to involve students in an Entrepreneurship Project accompanied by a classroom component. Students either work on their own businesses or involve themselves in another U-M entrepreneurial project. Credit is given for preparation, tracking and reporting tasks related to this activity. The project is initiated by a white paper which outlines the work, deliverables and success criteria for the practicum and which is consented to by each partner (link to white paper details). In parallel to the entrepreneurial activity, students participate in a weekly classroom component where they share experiences with fellow Practicum students, provide status reports, and hear from guest speakers. Students will be assigned an external mentor through the Center for Entrepreneurship and will be expected to meet or teleconference with the mentor at least every two weeks. Students are required to give a final presentation to a panel of external reviewers at the end of the semester. Final deliverables and the presentation will be graded by the course instructor based on feedback from external reviewers. Applications for participation are due Aug 1and Dec 1 each year prior to enrollment in ENGR 490-094: Practicum.

Students that may not have an entrepreneurial venture in mind are eligible to fulfill the Practicum requirement by obtaining a Start-Up Internship with a start-up venture in Southeast Michigan. Students are responsible for partnering with a local start-up company in town to gain entrepreneurial experience in practice. Eligibility for this program is dependent on the approval of a proposed work-plan by the student, start-up venture and the Center for Entrepreneurship. Students also participate in a weekly classroom component where they share experiences with fellow Practicum students, provide status reports, and hear from guest speakers. At the end of the semester, students are required to submit a case study that describes their experiences at the start-up and present their results to a Center for Entrepreneurship convened panel. The initial agreed-upon work-plan is due Aug 1 and Dec 1 each year prior to enrollment in ENGR 490-094: Practicum.

The CFE can help connect students with potential start-up ventures, but does not guarantee placement. The CFE is happy to work with students and start-up ventures to develop an appropriate work-plan.  Please contact aileenhs@umich.edu for further information.

Past projects from the Practicum are highlighted below:

Consider a typical college campus: a generally homogenous population interacting in a dense geographic area. These micro-communities are a vastly untapped social resource! CampusRoost, a location-aware social utility for campus neighborhoods, is the first to leverage these communities on a micro level.  CR leverages a user’s location and interests to create micro-communities of like-minded students grounded in the actual roosts (houses, apartments, dorms) they live in. A future People-Like-Me Engine will leverage a user’s Facebook data (interests, friends) as well as other parameters (courses, major, student organizations, etc) to suggest people of interest in a user’s geographic area. With sharing and communication tools, it is a unique platform for connecting students who are within walking distance of each other.

Students: Jason Bornhorst, Brent Traut, Dheeraj Sanka

The problem is clear.  The Bed and Breakfast accommodations in the Ann Arbor area are high-priced and there is no clear-cut favorite.  Shouldn’t an amazing city offer a great place to stay?  The business plan is to spin off a Bed and Breakfast within the Zingerman’s family of businesses.  This B & B will bring the Zingerman’s experience to the hospitality business and will champion great food, service, and hospitality.     

Student: Austin Kronig

Velocity Squared Wind LLC is a company started by two University of Michigan Engineering students.  The business has a unique technology for improving the payback on small wind systems, and a business model for selling complete turnkey systems to companies across the US and abroad.  The two founders, Charles King (B.S.E Fall 2008) and Alphonse Anderson (M.S.E Fall 2008), plan to take the business forward after graduation.  After some outdoor trials of a small prototype they will seek funding for the creation of a large-scale prototype and begin implementing the business plan. Moving from a simple idea to a complete business plan, creating a business entity, and deploying a small prototype were all made possible by the efforts of the founders and significant support from the Center for Entrepreneurship and MPowered.

Students: Charles King, Alphonse Anderson

 

UTooter.com is a website which allows tutors to list their availability and their subjects of expertise. Students use UTooter to find tutors, inspect tutors' ratings and reviews from past students, and make payments to tutors using a convenient payment system. Students can grant their parents access to their account, enabling them to make a deposit that can be spent on tutoring services, as well as monitor their student’s activity with tutors.

Student: Todd Zusman

Parabolic flights, also called “weightlessness flights”, “zero-G flights” or “microgravity
flights”, offers the possibility for anyone to experience weightlessness onboard a plane that performs parabolic trajectories. While those planes don’t reach space (they actually barely go higher than traditional planes) they offer several periods of weightlessness, as shown in the picture below.  Today, those kinds of flights are mainly performed either to train astronauts or to perform some scientific research.  The proposal is to open the first ever European/French commercial parabolic flights company, offering to the general public the amazing opportunity to experience the fun of weightlessness!

Student: Pierre-Damien Vaujour

Today’s nonprofit organizations are suffering from large program demand with small donation supply.  To solve this problem our team is building an e-community called WhereToGive.com that models the nonprofit sector’s business and interest groups’ donation matching.  Each dollar you donate will multiply into more dollars for your charity.  Furthermore, charities can leverage our donor-base to advertise their causes to interested donors much more cheaply than the 20 cents per dollar raised charities currently spend on average.  So come support your causes at WhereToGive.com where money grows on trees!

Students: Richard Franklin, Andrew Matti, Jeremy Verbit