Marietta College hosting area middle, high school students in inaugural Junior PioPitch on April 27
Program established to encourage entrepreneurial spirit with younger students
Marietta, Ohio (04/17/2017) — With the great success and promising growth seen in the PioPitch Program over the last two years, Marietta College's Entrepreneurship program is setting forth to collaborate with another segment of the increasingly entrepreneurial local community.
From 4:00-5:00 p.m., Thursday, April 27th, the inaugural Junior PioPitch program will take place in the Timothy O. Cooper Auditorium in Thomas Hall.
The featured presenters of the session will be middle school students enrolled in the Ely Chapman Foundation's after-school program and students enrolled at Marietta High School.
"The Junior PioPitch program provides a venue to middle school and high school students to present their entrepreneurial ideas and receive real time feedback," said Dr. Jacqueline Khorassani, Chair of the Business & Economics Department, Director of Entrepreneurship Programs and Lead Organizer of the PioPitch and PioBiz programs.
The Junior PioPitch program will follow in the footsteps of the original PioPitch program, allowing the participating students to give short "pitch" presentations pertaining to specific opportunities or challenges related to their developed ideas and receive real-time feedback from those in attendance.
"This is not a competition," Khorassani said. "There are no winners or losers. Rather, the idea is to give the student projects, their ideas, the attention they deserve in a non-threatening environment. We want to inspire students to tap into and use their creative minds."
With the hope of fostering even more creative and entrepreneurial spirit throughout the community, Khorassani is eager to see what is developed as a result of the program.
"We are excited about this program as it has been documented that the earlier a person is exposed to an entrepreneurial mindset, the more likely he/she will take on becoming an entrepreneur herself," she said.
The program has been established through the invested collaboration of the Entrepreneurship Program at Marietta College, Marietta High School and the Ely Chapman Education Foundation. The program was also supported by the Marietta Community Foundation, which provided a grant that funded the purchase of entrepreneurship educational books and other material for the students.
While the participating high school students developed their entrepreneurial ideas under the supervision of high school faculty, those enrolled in the Ely Chapman after-school program worked with Marietta College student Katie Hall '18 (Belpre, Ohio), an entrepreneurship student.
As with the now well established PioPitch and PioBiz programs, Khorassani and the rest of the faculty involved in the Entrepreneurship program are enthusiastic about the prospects and growth of the Junior PioPitch program.
"Depending on the degree of success of this year's program, we hope to be able to continue and expand the program in the future," she said.
PioPitch sessions are free and open to the public. Community members are encouraged to attend.
To learn more visit: Marietta.edu/piopitch or contact entr@marietta.edu.
Located in Marietta, Ohio, at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, Marietta College is a four-year liberal arts college. Tracing its roots to the Muskingum Academy begun in 1797, the College was officially chartered in 1835. Today Marietta College serves a body of 1,200 full-time students. The College offers 45 majors and has been listed among Barron's Best Buys in College Education and Peterson's Competitive Colleges, and has been recognized as one of the top regional comprehensive colleges by U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review, as well as one of the nation's best by Forbes.com.
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