Naturalist ranger Mara Meisel interacts with EMU MBA students in last summer's class on “Stewardship, Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship” at Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park.

EMU Course Minds Its Outdoor Business

Most business courses find students and instructors meeting in stuffy classrooms – not this one. At least, not entirely.

A short-term summer course at Eastern Mennonite University, “Stewardship, Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship,” will include field trips in the city of Staunton and in the great outdoors, specifically in the Big Meadows area of Shenandoah National Park.

Dr. Anthony E. (Tony) Smith, associate professor of business and economics and co-director of EMU’s MBA program, will lead the course.

Dr. Smith said the course has three objectives: developing and applying a strategic framework for stewardship design principles in organizations; increasing theoretical and practical understanding of the sources and types of innovation; and developing an understanding of social entrepreneurship and how businesses and nonprofit organizations apply these strategies.

The course will combine field trips, classroom and online discussion and case studies “with a systems approach to stewardship, innovation and social entrepreneurship,” Smith noted.

The class will meet each Thursday evening in, starting on June 2 from 6-10 p.m., and two Saturdays for the daytime field trips, on June 11 and 18.

“Organizations, and people who manage them, shape our world,” Smith said.  “Those who understand and master innovation, stewardship and social entrepreneurship increase their effectiveness as civic and business leaders and as leaders in their own chosen field. That’s the intent of this special course.”

Smith noted that “the field trips enable students to directly engage with entrepreneurs in the city of Staunton and to directly observe how stewardship design principles operate in natural ecologies and how those same principles also apply to human ecologies.”

For more information on the course, contact name Patty Eckard at 540-4320-4150 or email her at eckardp@emu.edu. See www.emu.edu/mba for more information about the course and a course syllabus.