NEWPATH: IT Entrepreneurship Program for Computing Students

If you are a BS-CSE, BS-CIS, BS-ECE, or BS-BA (Information Systems option) major or pre-major, have not yet completed more than 100 hours of your program, have a strong interest in entrepreneurship, and wish to join the NEWPATH program, please contact Dr. David Lee (lee@cse).

NEWPATH Objectives: NEWPATH is an NSF-supported program that has been set up at Ohio State with the mission to educate, train and nurture highly motivated students to become IT entrepreneurs of the information age. The most ambitious students will, by the time of graduation, be running their own IT startups and be ready to become the next generation of business and technology leaders of the IT world.

Intended Outcomes: The intended outcomes of the NEWPATH program are:

• To provide a thorough education in computing fundamentals as well as in the most promising ideas and technologies that are likely to form the core of small and large IT businesses of the future;
• To help students in the program develop, via the Entrepreneurship Minor program, a thorough understanding of essential issues and ideas related to creating, launching and running successful IT ventures;
• To help students develop and hone their entrepreneurship skills by providing suitable internship opportunities in IT startups and other suitable IT companies in the Central Ohio area;
• To provide students a realistic experience in planning, acquiring funding, and setting up and running an IT venture in a year-long e-practicum during the final year of the program; and
• To evaluate each aspect of the NEWPATH program to assess the efficacy of the various components and use the results of the assessments to continuously improve the program.

NEWPATH Program: Major and pre-major students in BS-CSE, BS-CIS, and BS-ECE (Computer option) programs with interests in entrepreneurship will be recruited into the program. Each student accepted into the program will be assigned two faculty advisors; one of these will be a NEWPATH faculty member from the CSE or ECE Dept., the other will be a NEWPATH faculty member from the Fisher College of Business. In addition, an industry mentor, a volunteer from the staff or affiliate company of TechColumbus, will be assigned to each student to help nurture the student's interests, knowledge and skills in technical topics as well as his or her entrepreneurship skills.

In addition to satisfying the requirements of their respective majors, NEWPATH students will complete the entrepreneurship minor; complete two internships in carefully selected IT companies; complete the culminating e-practicum in which they will take an idea from concept to the brink of commercialization; and, in the case of the most promising cases, especially the ones that attract interest of potential investors when the business cases are presented to them as part of the e-practicum, to create and run the startups. TechColumbus' staff members will help place students in appropriate internship positions and will play a key role in assessing and guiding student teams in the e-practicum. Most important, TechColumbus will actively assist student teams in setting up and running the startups. NSF (and possibly other) funds will be used to supplement or provide salaries for students during their internship periods; and to provide funding to support activities related to setting up and running the startups.

Evaluation: Evaluation is an integral part of the NEWPATH program. An external evaluator will work closely with the NEWPATH faculty to develop suitable rubrics for evaluating the program and its effectiveness in achieving its intended outcomes. The evaluation results will be used to identify and implement necessary improvements in the program.

Other: NEWPATH is one of the projects supported by the NSF under its CPATH program. The site at http://www.cpath-community.msu.edu/projects/nteit contains links to all the CPATH projects (including NEWPATH). A brochure providing a high-level overview of NEWPATH, including the rationale underlying the development of the program is available.

Note: These pages concerning the NEWPATH program are very much under construction and information in them is subject to substantial revision. If you have comments or suggestions about these pages, please send them to neelam AT cse.ohio-state.edu