Entrepreneurship

Experience Level - Gold

The entrepreneurship experience focuses on four different learning objectives related to their grand challenge. For my entrepreneurship experience, I was the acting treasurer for the UMBC SAE Snowmobile Club at UMBC. I helped start the club my sophomore year with three other members including a president, vice president, and secretary. To become treasurer, I hat to attend finance meetings with the student government association, talk with the student business service center, and purchase materials and equipment for the club. During this time, I will also be the SAE Baltimore chapter student representative. I attended monthly meetings with SAE teams from nearby schools to hear how other teams are doing from the area and what resources the Baltimore chapter could provide us.

During the time I spent as treasurer, I submitted proposals for funding to the SGA, completed a GritStarter campaign, attended weekly meetings, and set up two different Chipotle fundraisers. Since it was the first year of the club, I also created the bylaws for my position and wrote up procedures and training modules for future treasurers to complete.

This competition focuses on reducing emissions and noise pollution created by snowmobiles when they are being ridden, especially in conservation areas such as state and national parks. It challenges students to engineer ways for the snowmobile to run cleaner and more efficiently. This club is an opportunity for students to apply their knowledge learned from the classroom and apply it to a competition that promotes a cleaner burning, more eco-friendly sled. The competition takes place every year during march up in Houghton, Michigan and is comprised of close to 25 different universities. I attended the competition during my senior year at UMBC.

The completion of the entrepreneurship experience was evaluated on how it contributed to each of the four learning objectives.

Develop strategies for opportunities and identifying the tools for quality risk assessment. I had to submit funding proposals to the Student Government Association and the administration for funding requests. For these proposals, I had to identify what the SGA would provide money for, what could be provided from administration, and use risk assessment to determine what resources the club needed most.
Exhibit skills for communicating ideas in a concise and logical way. Working on an executive board required me to communicate to both the team members, other board members, and professional employees that the club had to meet with. As treasurer, I had to update the club on how many resources we had to expend.
Work efficiently in teams on entrepreneurship-related projects. Much of the first year of the club was spent setting up the foundation for the club. This involved writing budget proposals, bylaws, and meeting with finance employees from the student affairs business service center.
Apply entrepreneurial thinking to social issues and social problems. The Clean Snowmobile Challenge is focused on engineering innovative ways to reduce snowmobile emissions, noise pollution, and fuel consumption. Reducing emissions is one of the most pressing problems in the world today and this club is a great way to start combatting it.