BABSON Entrepreneurship Programme
- Email [email protected]
- Contact (868) 625-5030
L-R: Dr. Gillian Paul President (Ag.) COSTAATT, Mr. Jaggernauth Soom, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tertiary Education and Skills Training, Dr. Allan I. McKenzie, COSTAATT Chairman, Professor Andrew Zacharakis, Mr. Howard Jacob, Director of Business Development of Babson College and Mr. Sherwyn Millette, Dean of the School of Business and Information Technologies at COSTAATT
COSTAATT has embarked on a multi-year programme with Babson College of Boston, Massachusetts, USA to develop a cadre of faculty who are uniquely equipped to lead a sector-wide approach in the transformation of entrepreneurship education in Trinidad and Tobago.
The COSTAATT-Babson Initiative, which is funded by a government grant accessed under the 9th European Development Fund (EDF), is intended to strengthen the College’s capacity to identify and support talented, budding entrepreneurs across all programmes offered by the College. The EDF grants are awarded by the Ministry of Tertiary Education and Skills Training (TEST) for projects which strengthen outcomes in the tertiary education sector as a whole.
The official launch of the faculty workshops was held on October 16th, 2012 at the Carlton Savannah and was preceded by stakeholder consultations in which representatives of agencies such as AmCham, NEDCO, the Ministry of Labour and Small and Micro-Enterprises, NIHERST, UTT, USC, NTA, YTEPP and the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business were able to learn more about Babson College’s unique and highly successful model for entrepreneurship education and its experience in promoting growth and sustainability in entrepreneurial activity across the globe.
Speaking at the launch, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tertiary Education and Skills Training, Mr. Jaggernauth Soom, noted that the initiative was consistent with the Ministry’s own strategic interventions in the tertiary education sector to produce outcomes that are more informed by labour market needs and Government’s development agenda.
Dr. Allan I. McKenzie, in his welcome remarks as Chairman of the COSTAATT Board of Trustees, indicated that the faculty workshops would facilitate an intensification of the College’s efforts to support government policy on economic diversification. According to Dr. McKenzie, “The current focus on college-wide faculty training represents another important component of an institutional strategy to nurture a culture of entrepreneurship across our entire student population, through the inculcation of entrepreneurial values and thinking across all disciplines.”
Dean of the School of Business and Information Technologies at COSTAATT, Mr. Sherwyn Millette said the initiative would produce many benefits, including increasing faculty’s ability to recognise and develop potential entrepreneurs; infuse entrepreneurial concepts into diverse curricula; and increase the entrepreneurial propensity and activity amongst graduates.
Mr. Millette gave the audience an insight into COSTAATT’s pioneering work in the area of entrepreneurship education, noting that the College had introduced a mandatory course in Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship for all degree-seeking students and had been the first tertiary level institution in Trinidad and Tobago to introduce a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree in Management and Entrepreneurship in 2009.
The aim of these curricular innovations is to produce a new generation of graduates with a different understanding of their possibilities for self actualisation and wealth generation, and the COSTAATT-Babson Initiative is intended to build on this foundation.
On October 17th and 18th 2012, approximately 60 participants from a wide range of institutions took part in the first of the series of workshops in the COSTAATT-Babson Initiative. The workshops were facilitated by renowned professor in the field of entrepreneurship, Professor Andrew Zacharakis and supported by the Director of Business Development at Babson, Mr. Howard Jacob.
Professor Andrew Zacharakis is The John H. Muller, Jr. Chair in Entrepreneurship at Babson College and the Director of the Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference. His writings and research focus on two major areas of entrepreneurship: the venture capital decision-making process, and entrepreneurial growth strategies and he has been interviewed in newspapers nationwide, including The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times based on his work in entrepreneurial development. Professor Zacharakis expressed delight at working with the faculty in Trinidad and Tobago on such a noteworthy project and looked forward to his return in November 2012 for the second in the series of workshops.
For more information on the COSTAATT-Babson Initiative, contact [email protected]
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