Champlain College and Hula pair up to develop a new generation of entrepreneurs

Champlain College and Hula, Burlington’s coworking campus and business incubator, are launching a new collaboration next semester that includes an entrepreneurship course taught in part by startup founders.

Champlain’s Miller Center campus in Burlington is a short distance from Hula.

“I think we have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this growing trend that seems to be happening in the United States, where college campuses are becoming more and more physically integrated with business development,” said Russ Scully, the founder of Hula. and member of the Champlain College Board of Directors.

Alex Hernandez, president of Champlain College, which aims to prepare students for a career after graduation, said that by partnering with Hula, he hopes to break down the walls between the workplace and the classroom. class.

Hernandez and Scully developed the idea for the course.

“I see it as a very symbiotic relationship,” Scully said. “Hula is very focused on developing the workforce for companies, especially tech companies in the region, and really helping to try to slow down this brain drain of higher education students who end up leaving. the area because they can’t find the job they’re looking for.

Hernandez will co-teach the entrepreneurship master class at Hula this spring semester with Hula CEO Rob Lair. The course is offered by Champlain’s Skiller School of Business.

Twenty-four students have registered for the course, which begins on January 17.

Among them is Ahmed Adan, a third-year business administration and finance student at Champlain who started Fuay, which he calls a graphic design coding company.

“I look forward to the networking opportunities,” said Adan.

Wolde North, a fourth-year game business and publishing student at Champlain, is also enrolled. He runs the college’s climbing club and trains tourist guides.

“I think the main thing I hope to get out of this is just a general understanding of opening a small business and what people think about when they go into business,” North said.

Another student taking the course, Olivia Hutchins, is a business administration and digital marketing student at Champlain. She’s working on an app that she hopes to have up and running by the time she graduates in May. She looks forward to building a large network of business contacts through the course, as students will be invited to events at Hula.

“These new connections are going to give us bridges to really learn how to build a business, but also have these connections to just ask questions,” Hutchins said.

The class will bring together founders and entrepreneurs as guest speakers.

“Students are going to be immersed in the Hula community, learning from entrepreneurs,” Hernandez said, adding that students will have the opportunity to tackle projects with companies in Hula.

He said OVR Technology, a Hula-based company that brought smell to virtual reality, approached a group of Champlain students to help develop its first prototype.

Champlain will install an Innovation Hub Project Manager in Hula to match Hula businesses with Champlain students.

“I think of it as an internship agent within Hula,” Scully said. “With this Project Manager or Internship Officer at Hula, we can broker those relationships and make them really seamless, simple, and efficient for employers and students.”

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