With a three-week residential program, Kentucky high schoolers can earn three hours of college credit at Northern Kentucky University.
The Governor’s School of Entrepreneurship (GSE) lets students develop a business model, design a prototype, and pitch a startup idea to an audience and judges.
“GSE teaches the opportunities, benefits, and pitfalls of taking a business concept from the idea phase to pitching it to potential investors,” says GSE Executive Director Tasha Sams. “Basically, we turn high schoolers into business owners for free.”
The highly selective, competitive program isn’t a “cushy summer camp,” Sams stresses. It combines STEM skills with enterprise development, and it’s highly effective—students love it. By the end of the program, teens use business lingo and are confident in delivering business pitches.
The program, which started in 2013, has been housed at NKU since 2018 and has served more than 600 teens, and it has a history of success, Sams says. Alums have launched more than 30 small businesses and filed for multiple patents.
“We seek the innovative thinkers, the collaborators, the risk takers, the change makers, the teens with a drive that is unstoppable,” she says. “They are Kentucky’s future business creators and leaders.”
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