Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management’s wide-ranging entrepreneurial education program, known as Beyond Silicon Valley, has been honored in the first Entrepreneurship Spotlight Challenge (ESC) of AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
AACSB, the Weatherhead School’s accrediting body, is the largest business education network connecting students, academia and business to advance business education. A review panel for AACSB’s ESC attracted 120 nominations, submitted from 34 countries. Thirty-five nominations, representing 11 countries, were selected for the spotlight, including Beyond Silicon Valley.
The honors occurred at the AACSB’s International Conference and Annual Meeting Sunday through Tuesday (April 23-25) in Houston. According to AACSB, the spotlight honorees featured the best examples of entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity, while showcasing how business schools engage with business practice to provide students an opportunity to gain core skills required for success.
The centerpiece of Beyond Silicon Valley is a massive open online course (MOOC) that highlights Cleveland’s experiences forming a support structure for new business enterprises. The MOOC began online through Coursera in April 2014. More than 120,000 students from over 190 countries have registered for Beyond Silicon Valley, which received financial support from The Burton D. Morgan Foundation.
“We have created a tremendous number of linkages that have benefited our undergraduate and graduate students, as well as exposing what we’re doing through the MOOC and in seminars and lectures often done in partnership with U.S. Department of State,” said Weatherhead School of Management Assistant Professor Michael Goldberg, who created Beyond Silicon Valley.
Beyond Silicon Valley’s video lectures are translated into 16 languages—the most of any course on the Coursera platform, Goldberg said.
“In three countries (Greece, Macedonia and Kosovo), the State Department has provided funding for the creation of local Beyond Silicon Valley video lectures that tell the story of how entrepreneurship is supported in their own communities,” he said.
At Case Western Reserve, Goldberg teaches Beyond Silicon Valley, a SAGES seminar for undergraduate students.
This article was originally published April 27, 2017.