What does school and education mean to you? What a "non-traditional" student has to say to that!

Kudos to the ASU student team that just innovated a new mask motivated by our current COVID-19 pandemic! This team of entrepreneurial students at ASU has just been chosen as the top 10 finalists out of thousands of competitors from 70 different countries!

THERE'S NO BETTER WAY TO LEARN! THERE'S NOTHING BETTER FOR THE WORLD! THERE'S NO BETTER WAY TO GET YOUR MONEY'S WORTH FROM HIGER EDUCATION! This is the type of value educational institutions should be bringing to students and to the world!

This student team will keep their innovation-magic and "purpose-based education" flowing as they compete to win their piece of that $Million Dollar prize, and work with 3M to bring their innovation to market! Ka-pow, this real-life collaboration model of teaching and learning melts my heart! KUDOS!! azfamily.com https://www.azfamily.com/news/asu-students-are-semi-finalists-in-mask-contest/article_85710fb8-2ddb-11eb-be6a-c7d82e8156c6.html

Every level of education, ESPECIALLY higher education, should be 100% "Purpose-Based". It should be based on real-life. Historical facts and data points should be paired with relevance, and what our students generate from it should benefit our community, our culture, and our economy. This also helps us build vital soft-skills that are definitely missing from the country's historical core curriculum. When Purpose-Based learning is designed properly in schools and universities, it also sets the students up to pair with their most ideal employers and job as well.

After leading three companies to be loved, mulit-million dollar market-leaders, all with successful exits, and being appointed Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for one of the largest and most innovative universities in the world, I discovered my passion for teaching adults. I also came to the podium with the belief that entrepreneurship is a vital piece of our DNA we must continuously nourish and exercise, but I found out Entrepreneurship was seen as "business ownership" in 2014. The most common comment I heard was, "I don't know if I want to own and run my own business". This Entrepreneurship & Innovation content was available to all students across every sector and grade; from Freshman to Ph.D...but with no course credit.

Bringing entrepreneurship and students into my companies made all the difference to our corporate culture and success. The surprise benefits included the fact we gleaned fresh ideas that were not tainted with bias. Also, our corporate team members felt accoutable to the students in both behavior as role models and delivery of results. I think back and smile; there was Peter, a young programmer who came in and coded circles around our team members and built things they said could not be done. Of course, we then hired Peter full-time. (I can write a whole book about Peter!) Also, when Adam came in as a student intern and kept selling more than any of our service counselors had. Adam's excitement, techniques and achievements lit a wonderful fire in everyone's bellies, and this helped us collectively learn and grow. Adam was also joined us as an employee, naturally. Then there was Paul, an "unemployable" young man referred to us from AZ state rehab services. Paul had a pretty serious tramautic brain injury (TBI) as a teenager from a drunk driving accident. Paul brought a good deal of laughter, creativity and task-relief value to us as well. Our team enjoyed Paul and in the process, they recognized and encouraged his artistic abilities. As a result, Paul's entrepreneurial spirit was stimulated and he started selling his artwork through creative outlets.

Entrepreneurship (to me) is a part of your brain that creates, learns how to make decisions, learns how to collaborate with others and it teaches us how to identify and pull the magic out of assets for everyone's benefit.

The other thing it commonly does is, it makes the curriculum relevant, thus raises excitement levels and a sense of purpose that helps us feel useful, happy and energetically productive.

Despite all my experience in life and my Bachelor's from Boston University, this experience as Entrepreneur in Residence motivated me to go back to school to earn my master's degree the second I saw that Western International University offered a Master's in Human Dynamics. It was a wild ride for a number of reasons, but since I completed the program with all 100%'s...a solid 4.0, I was asked to speak at the big commencement event. But guess what!? ...the school was closing down and they told me commencement was no longer going to be about the students. It was shifted to celebrate the teachers and administrators.

Since when is any iteration of education not about the students? It takes a village, but the village is a dearth of meaning without the students and the teachers. No matter what data a person knows, it's irrelevant until someone realizes it and shares it to some real-life benefit, and then the "academic effort" naturally leads to a perfect company and job for that student. Hopefully, this pandemic will continue to shake things up in education, but in a good way that funnels some of those fees and enrollment funds into industry so meaningful partnerships form and everyone wins! Let's keep thinking that way and see what happens, hopefully, sooner than later!

www.dhirubhai.net/in/ErikaFeinberg

https://bit.ly/PurposePassionProfitTopSeller