Many students attend college to study with exceptional professors in fields, such as biostatistics, with the hope of getting mentored, performing research, connecting with others in parallel fields of interest, and gaining a grasp of how they might carve career paths. On paper all this sounds neat, clean, and almost easy. Yet, in reality, none of it is easy. The hardest part of most endeavors is the people part. Learning how to deal with people and setting goals are, for most students, difficult tasks. It’s too easy to screw up, to not do at all, or to get knocked off course. This is why Rick Cherwitz, an associate dean of graduate studies, and professor of communications at the University of Texas, Austin, set up the Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) Program.
The IE program performs a needed service: it connects students in a range of undergraduate departments with graduate students, faculty, and internships, to form a network of contacts that the students can then use to:
Assess the value of their studies and how they might be used in the real world
Discover just how relevant their studies are and adjust their future plans accordingly
Think beyond their major in considering options for further study, internship, or employment
Confer with graduate students to determine if graduate school is appropriate
Devise specialty majors and piece together courses that might span their academic and professional goals
The desired goal of interns in the IE program is to shift their model of education from apprenticeship, certification, and entitlement, “to one of discovery, ownership, and accountability.” (The Washington Post, 3 March 2010, ‘Linking College Academics to Careers’, by Rick Cherwitz)
How does an undergraduate student sign up for this noble quest? IE Internships are available to all undergraduates at the University of Texas, but to get into the program, students must gain the consent of a faculty member and/or graduate student who is willing to supervise the internship. (That’s a distinct hurdle, but not a formidable one. Further, the IE program does supply lists of willing mentors to get the process in motion.) Internship projects, assignments, and tasks are then negotiated among the newly formed IE team members. Obviously, to accomplish these efforts, interns will need to network and meet other students, faculty members, graduate students, and business owners along the way. Learning how best to network, negotiate and plan are all essential tools to maximize IE interns’ personal, academic, and professional performances.
Justin Jefferson, who just graduated from UT Austin, was the first from his family to attend college. He joined the IE program at the suggestion of his academic advisor. Justin’s initial goal was to become a doctor, but he wasn’t sure how to approach preparing for medical school and beyond, so he took a semester to meet and speak with graduate student mentors, faculty mentors and experts in the field of medicine to discover how they attained their present positions and whether he had the capability to replicate their successes. During the process he worked as a lab technician, actually interviewed and shadowed a number of practicing physicians and discovered he had little desire to become a clinical physician. His interest was in biotechnology. Consequently, he joined a pharmaceutical company, and is working in a research position with the possibility of pursuing graduate school.
Since 2004 over 1,200 students have participated in the IE program. A portion of their stories are recounted at https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/kern.html. With the constant refrain of high unemployment, and the ineffectual nature of many college undergraduate programs, the UT at Austin Intellectual Entrepreneur program is a bright spot. It opens the somewhat insular halls of colleges to the realities of the world and engages its interns with the most important subject any of us might study: how to turn ourselves into productive, engaged ‘citizen-scholars.’ Any intellect can easily recognize the entrepreneurial allure of this program; it really should be national in scope.