When students go off to college, the main goal is to be able to spread their wings and go out into the world. They are expected to make connections, find a job, figure out how to take care of themselves, and find out who they are.
The Business Club and INCubator/ACCelerator programs at Mount Carmel give students a great precursor to those lessons.
MC president Mr. Brendan Conroy got the idea for the Business Club last school year after speaking with some of the board members, discovering that many of them had useful knowledge to share regarding business, networking, and personal finance. He saw an opportunity to grow MC’s economic education front, adding it to the already existing finance-adjacent classes, in particular the INCubator and ACCELerator programs, courses taught by MC principal Mr. Scott Tabernacki that put many of the Biz Club’s ideas to use in the form of a creating a startup business.
The club and classes, predictably, share a large overlap in members. Students find the coherence to be helpful in learning about the application of skills. “In Business Club one time they told us about marketing yourself,” says junior Kenny Groen. “Just some stuff about making your own brand. I could definitely see that being useful if we were to create an ad for a product we’d create in INCubator.”
Not only does Business Club help students navigate the realm of macroeconomics, but the focus on microeconomics, a.k.a. personal finance, allows students to develop a well-rounded sense of the world when it comes to money.
“Mr. [Griff] Ehrenstrom ’81 leads the business club, and he’s taught us a lot about how to prepare ourselves for the real world,” says junior T.J. Kolke. “He’s taught us about personal finance stuff like the stock market and smart investing as well as networking and branding.” Useful skills for being an adult, in other words.
It’s no coincidence that the man behind the recent expansion is Mr. Conroy. He’s excited for this generation, excited to give them an opportunity to learn things he wishes he had learned before navigating the world on his own.
“If this opportunity had presented itself when I was in high school I probably wouldn’t be interested,” Mr. Conroy says, “but I should have been. That’s the great iron. I realize now that had I had that interest or that opportunity and developed a knowledge on the subject, I certainly would be more versed in areas that I’m not as strong in.”
The Business Club and INCubator programs can also provide a unique type of education in the way that they do not involve as much conventional learning, which is usually based on memorization or process based problem-solving. Instead, they teach kids a way to conduct themselves and apply learning in a more direct way outside the traditional classroom.
“I think those kinds of experiences like the business club can be where the real learning happens,” says Mr. Conroy. “There’s no books, there’s just someone with knowledge who is sharing something, and in INCubator’s case, allowing you to really DO something.”
The values learned in the field of business are sometimes concrete, like personal finance, but sometimes there are more interpretive lessons to be learned. The club and classes work together to teach a whole assortment of valuable skills, skills that might one day transfer to real world success.
“I wish we had this when I was in high school,” says Mr. Tabernacki. “It not only helps you understand about running a company, but it is a great experience that would play right into my learning style. Both Biz Club and INC allow our guys the freedom to explore, to fail, and to learn. I would have responded well to these opportunities and to the people involved in them. You don’t find someone like Mr. Ehrenstrom and all of his knowledge very often. It’s important to have people like that exposed to our guys and for them to be able to network with him. That’s invaluable and that sets us apart. Who wouldn’t want to join that?”
