Catholic Entrepreneurship & Design Experience (CEDE)

Prof. Luke Burgis elaborates on how to redeem higher education from soul-deadening conformity in “The Promise of Entrepreneurial Education,” in City Journal. RTWT at the link in our Linktree.” . . 🏷️ #lukeburgis #benotconformed #entrepreneurshipeducation #highered #principledentrepreneurship #CityJournal #RedeemEducation #Linktree #RTWT #EducationReform

This week, we had the privilege of hosting Jon Bachura, Director of our CEDE Program, in our Vocations of Business class! Our students had an incredible experience participating in market-like games, gaining insights into the importance of value creation, and most importantly, the best practices of entrepreneurship. To learn more about our CEDE Program, click the link below. #ThisIsCatholicU #WhyCatholicU #PrincipledEntrepreneurship

After ten years of playing pit with entrepreneurship students this past week at The Busch School of Business, we set a new level of excellence. I've had a few days to reflect on it and would like to share two things that led to the best rounds ever. There were more, but these two stood out the most. 1. These are, for the most part, first-semester freshman undergrads, minus a couple of non-traditional students that I got to meet. 18 years old, finally living college life at one of the best schools, in the capital of the United States of America, on a Tuesday morning. But they were different. It puzzled me for a couple of days, in a good way. Their response was more communal in nature, and I couldn't figure out why. Then, it hit me. We played later this semester than we normally do, which means, to me, that they have gotten to know each other better. They've had more time. And not just in this class but in their lives. They come from all over the mid-Atlantic, and some of them come from across the country. For some of them, this is their first time living away from family, friends, and the usual suspect comforts and conformities. And for a couple of them that I got to talk to, they are the first of their family to attend ANY university, let alone The Catholic University of America. We purposely build auction items that can easily be shared and split if the winning bidder wants to. Call it "a nudge." But those items typically get picked up on Thursday after we've played a different game that specifically forces them to form small groups during the rounds. Tuesday, they went first. And, because they were already at that point in their personal relationships, they were pooling their resources earlier, too. For that first item that we sold, you could hear the group shouting from the crowd to their representative tasked with picking the item, "Get the big bag of mints! We can SHARE!" My heart swelled. 2. In partnership with that, they got to the rivalry stage a whole day earlier. You see, after playing these market-based games and earning bags full of poker chips, the last auction item on Thursday is always a pure "us versus them" type of scene. At that point, they know the poker chips are coming home with me and are worthless after the session. So they drive up the bid, and two rival factions always emerge. To them, it doesn't matter what the last auction item is. It's about winning. It happened this time on Tuesday (and Thursday). I think it has to do with their connection, but it allowed us to dig deeper into the need for entrepreneurs to build networks at every stage. The tension in the auction is fun for me and challenges their ability to make decisions under pressure. "So what," you ask? My thesis is renewed: We don't have to teach them to be entrepreneurs. They already are. Our task is to help them encounter themselves in market scenarios and hold space for the soulcraft of entrepreneurship. They will do the rest. 😀

Jon Bachura is leading classes for Mercatum Week. Yesterday, he played his own variation on the game of Pit, adjusted to teach Entrepreneurship lessons with the students in 118. He introduced them to an open outcry commodity marketplace with its own fiat currency! @jonbachura

The new cohort of the Novak Fellowship launched last week! This inter-school and interdisciplinary group meets monthly to study the intersection of markets, politics, and culture and find solutions to human problems. We were delighted to have had our first meeting just two days shy of the late Michael Novak’s 90th birthday! #novakfellowship #principledentrepreneurship #enterprisesolutions #NovakFellowshipLaunch #InterSchoolCollaboration #InterdisciplinaryStudy #HumanProblemSolvers #MichaelNovak #SocialImpact #CollaborativeLearning