Up for the Challenge

While our alumni continue to impress, pivoting their businesses and innovating across sectors, our faculty also haven’t missed a beat.

Modifying their classes, yet keeping experiential learning in play, faculty are helping students make the most of their new online environment.

Staying Connected

After shifting online, Adjunct Lecturer Mark Carr sought to find a way to remain connected with his students above and beyond the classroom.

His solution? Informal coffee meetups with his classes, attended by students from across the United States, and from Europe to India. Discussions have centered on on everything from conditions and challenges students are facing to finding business opportunities in crisis and student venture ideas.

“In a period when we are being asked to practice social distancing, it is all too easy to feel isolated and disconnected from each other,” Carr said. “We have to look even more strongly for ways to connect. The meetups are one way to do that.”

Bringing Today’s Topics to the Classroom

The coronavirus outbreak has led to definite twists and turns in the economy as of late. Lecturer Amy Blitz analyzes these trends in real time by incorporating them into her courses.

This semester, Blitz also welcomed one student’s father to visit as a guest speaker, whom she described as an “expert on the trade.”

Another student wrote to Blitz, “You’re helping us see this crisis with a very valuable lens and you are helping us contextualize all of this. For that, I am very grateful.” 

Linking Two Countries Online

Beginning May 19, Lecturer Peter Cohan, who frequently shares his thought leadership in publications including Forbes and Inc. Magazine and on local television stations, will take his students and their Elective Abroad, The Israel Startup Ecosystem, online.

As part of the course, students will learn how Israel spurs startups, how the nation’s business culture operates, and how entrepreneurs can build business relationships with Israeli startups, investors, and accelerators.

 Learn more about Babson’s summer session, featuring Cohan’s course, The Israel Startup Ecosystem.

The class will include interactive discussions with Israeli entrepreneurs and government officials, and will conclude with a six-week project to help Israeli startups develop growth strategies.

Students Set Records

At Babson, faculty know that students can be continuously challenged, no matter the circumstances.

In a separate virtual class with Cohan, students were tasked with what might seem like an impossible assignment during a global pandemic—convince investors to fund their startups.

Days later, he learned one team secured a $2 million investment.

“I was shocked,” said Cohan. The investment was at least 10 times larger than any other group has received in the seven years he has been leading the course.

Posted in Community

Tagged Faculty, Online Classes, Student Life

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