Minutes: Alliance to Enhance Entrepreneurial Impact to Stimulate Economic Growth among Underserved Groups in North America Consortium meeting in Bowling Green, Kentucky, April 26th to May 2nd, 2010 Attendees:  Dan Myers  Matt Marvel  Ann Walsh  Barbara Ribbens Purpose : Meeting Preparation : Meeting Expectations :  Yves Robichaud  Egbert McGraw  Lucille Landry     José Nicolás Barragán Codina Karla Marisol Garza Nieto Karla Hermosillo Simone Kübler Meet members and develop plan for year of the Project Review goals, objectives, outcomes, and evaluation plan Develop strategic plan for exchange of students, website, and the Summer Entrepreneurship Consulting Program Agenda: Project overview and content planning Project evaluation We reviewed the proposed activities for year 2; we concluded that we have met all the objectives except for the number of exchanges students which is a little below the targeted numbers but we feel comfortable that we will be able to catch up on the number of mobile students during the third year of the project We have been told by FIPSE that we need to develop a common course or common modules in order to meet the objectives of our project We will develop an online course that will be offered to students from all the participating institution We have decided that we will take the next year to work on the development of the online course and we are targeting Fall 2011 to offer the course and it will be offered by Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon We updated the matrix and the contact information for each institution We organized faculty development through a conference The faculties involved in the project attended a conference at Western Kentucky University The conference was offered by Bill Samuels, President of Maker's Mark Bourbon who talked about entrepreneurship and the creation and launching of a new brand of Bourbon The partners who attended the annual meeting in Kentucky also attended the study abroad symposium that was organized by Western Kentucky University We reviewed the proposed activities for year of our project and we are confident that we will be able to meet the objectives External evaluation for the second year of the project will be done after our meeting We should receive the next external evaluation in the next few weeks Anticipating potential policy Mutual recognition and mobility of academic credits among partner universities The matrix is complete and has been reviewed Course and credit reciprocity - Students need to fill a request for their transcript before they return home Costs to students (mandatory insurance, student association fee) We are still missing the information for Monterrey and Laurentian Program option details Student exchange options - Academic semester or year - Summer program (9 credits) - Credited internships Innovative curriculum, teaching materials, methods and modules Matt Marvel is teaching a new course at WIU called international entrepreneurship The entrepreneurship course offered at UP during the summer school is a new course José Barragán from Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon has a case study on innovation and development of new products and services, it is a case study that students need to write and propose solutions but it is very extensive and can be a course itself The course will be adapted to each country, the course will entirely be an online course, and the students will work in multicultural teams between the three participating country and can present a variety of proposals We have to discuss the content, who will be teaching the course, when will the course be offered and whether we want to have the students present their project through video conference The pre requisite for the online course will be basic entrepreneurship or basic marketing Development and delivery of integrated modules in existing courses and through a joint summer program - We finalized the last details of the summer program and created the working groups - Students will be taking three courses: Spanish, entrepreneurship, and international management - Students will also be taking a workshop on “Doing business in Mexico” - Students will visit two Mexican companies - Students will work in groups of to and will write a to 10 pages maximum case study with the questions and how the case can be solved (solutions) They will present their case at the end of the summer program This project has two goals: publication in journal and material for classes - Project: The students will have some time in the afternoons to work on their projects They can organize visits to the companies but they will have to cover the cost of transportation The companies are: 1) Ixaltepec (women) - Rachel and Justin 2) Learn to drive school (Salvador) (teaching people with disabilities to become taxi drivers) – Michelle, Pierre, and Melanie 3) Incubator (business plan development) – Melissa and Maude 4) CEPI (accelerator business) – Kathleen, Caroline - Yves Robichaud from Laurentian University suggested that a group of students work on collecting data for our research on underserved groups - Simone Kubler from Universidad Panamericana informed us that the cost of the summer program will change due to a change of professor and depending on the number of students attending the program, she will send us more information next week Acquisition of languages (intensive language program) and exposure to the cultures of Canada, Mexico, and the United States - Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon offers a five weeks Spanish immersion program and Université de Moncton offers a five weeks French immersion program Student apprenticeships, experiential learning, and other work related experiences - It was suggested that we have a link on the webpage to different resources Each country will have to provide the information and/or the link -Western Kentucky University is able to issue visas for internships -Opportunities for internships in Mexico Opportunities for program spin-offs Short and long-term faculty exchanges - Dan Myers and April Scheild from Western Kentucky University went to Université de Moncton in December 2009 to meet and offer a conference to the Tri-lateral MBA students - Egbert McGraw and Claude Dionne from Université de Moncton went to Western Kentucky University in February 2010 to offer conferences in an international marketing course and an accounting course - Lucille Landry from Université de Moncton went to Universidad Panamericana to offer two conferences on intercultural communication and doing business in Canada - Lucille will create a matrix for faculty exchanges and will send it to all the partners Joint research activities  Yves, Rana and Jean-Charles wrote a paper on “Motives, Success Factors, and Barriers Among Canadian Female Entrepreneurs: The Case of Greater Sudbury” The paper was presented to a conference in October 2009 (Canadian Council of Small and Medium Enterprises) and was published in the proceedings of the Conference The paper was accepted for publication in the Winter 2010 “Entrepreneurship Practice Review Journal”  Research on underserved groups between the three countries: -Partners from the three countries have developed a survey to compare underserved groups between the three countries The aspects of performance, success, immigration, ethnicity, poverty group, and rural/urban women are being studies Yves sent the latest version of the survey in order to develop a research in Mexico, will then be send to the colleagues for a potential international joint research The size of the sample will be 200 entrepreneur women -Following the phone conference we had last month, the survey was revised and translated Yves and Egbert started last week; he purchased a data bank (info Canada) Both Canadian institutions have hired students to call companies to see if they are interested in answering a questionnaire for our study and to know how they want to answer the questionnaire (phone, fax, email) -Karla Hermisillo from Universidad Panamericana informed the partners that they will have to go through CEPI but this is a specific type of participants and they are not sure yet how they will be able to answer the questionnaire They are afraid that the Mexican companies dealing with CEPI will all score low on the survey; the partners feel that this will not be a problem for the purpose of our research We might be able to add a question related to social entrepreneurship on which most of the Mexican companies will score higher than the American and Canadian companies -Ann, Barb, and Yves told the group that we cannot change the questions in the survey only for Mexico because the data will become unaccountable and we won’t be able to compare and the research we want to -Barb suggested that we go through the survey with the companies but that we also interview the selected companies -Yves suggested that the students participating in the summer semester in Mexico could take the survey and interview some companies -Dawn from Western Kentucky University can take the survey and put it into easy survey package (ESP) -The companies will be surveyed in June and July -Ann Walsh from Western Illinois University has a cover letter that she sends to companies when she wants to collect data from them Ann will send a copy of the letter to all partners -Our goal is to have the data collection completed by next directors’ meeting  Research on tax systems: -Yves and Egbert are working on a research to compare the tax rate in the three countries and would like the participation of the other partnering institutions to gather data for this research -Barbara Ribben from Western Illinois University told us to look the IMF website because they have data that we could use for our research The data are called “Doing Business”: http://www.doingbusiness.org/features/Highlights2010.aspx Homologation of the research methodology - The Mexican partners will send to Yves a one page description of the methodology they used Innovative teaching methods and course components (virtual projects, case studies, exercises) - We have decided to work on a joint case study for fall 2010 on cultural harassment – José from UANL, Yves from Laurentian, and Bob fro WKU will be doing the case study with their students, the other partners are welcome to join the project Student mobility framework and promotion for our consortium Dates of beginning and ending of semesters at each institution -The partners revised and updated the matrix Application process at each institution -The partners shared their application process with the others Housing -At Western Kentucky University, students have the option to stay in dorms or to rent an apartment for the registry Cultural preparation -It is the responsibility of the home institutions to prepare their students for a semester abroad Number of students participating in the program for Spring 2010, Summer 2010, and Fall 2010 -Laurentian University has four students going to Universidad Panamericana for the summer 2010 semester -Universidad Panamericana has three students going to Western Kentucky University for the Fall 2010 semester Website -Western Kentucky University is responsible for developing our project’s website The website will be done by the end of the summer Promotional brochure -Université de Moncton and Laurentian University have developed a promotional brochure for the Canadian students -Western Illinois University has developed a promotional brochure for their students Next meeting Our next meeting will be the Directors’ meeting in the United States at the end of October 2010 The location and the dates are yet to be determined ... working groups - Students will be taking three courses: Spanish, entrepreneurship, and international management - Students will also be taking a workshop on “Doing business in Mexico” - Students... is able to issue visas for internships -Opportunities for internships in Mexico Opportunities for program spin-offs Short and long-term faculty exchanges - Dan Myers and April Scheild from Western... for the Canadian students -Western Illinois University has developed a promotional brochure for their students Next meeting Our next meeting will be the Directors’ meeting in the United States