January 31, 2019
Miller School Presents at USASBE
Dennis Barber, III; back, second from left
Drs. Michael Harris and Dennis Barber, III, from COB’s Miller School of Entrepreneurship recently presented at the 2019 United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Conference in St. Petersburg Beach, Florida. The first presentation, titled “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Rural Environments: Using Microbusinesses to Drive Economic Development and Engagement,” focused on the microenterprise program that recently launched at ECU, and how the Miller School is working to create a national model for rural entrepreneurship.
The second presentation, titled “Innovation, Impact and Collaborative Learning through Student-Led Consulting Project,” featured a collaboration between the Miller School and partners at Western Kentucky University and Bradley University. The discussion focused on the impact of student consulting projects on both the educational experience of students and the business clients served in the local communities. The Small Business Institute program at ECU has completed over 600 consulting projects since its inception in 1974.
Additionally, Dr. Barber participated in the Entrepreneurship Teaching and Learning Scholars Program (ETLS). The program is designed for USASBE members to help enhance the learning experiences of their students and entrepreneurs – both in their classrooms and in their co-curricular contexts. It’s an eight-month, intensive professional development experience through which educators will design, implement, test and publish (in a form appropriate to their goals) an innovative and new-to-them project that’ll move the needle at their school in some way related to a significant student learning experience.
While at this year’s USASBE conference, Barber’s ETLS program activities included participation in a workshop, serving on a panel and facilitating a consortium.
In other news, the Miller School will serve as one of the titled sponsors for the 2020 USASBE Conference in New Orleans next January.
ECU’s College of Business is located in Greenville, North Carolina and currently has more than 28,000 alumni throughout the United States. It’s one of the largest colleges of business in North Carolina.
