NEW SHARON – Young entrepreneurs in the area will have a place to go for support in reaching their goals with the creation of The Center For Entrepreneurial Studies – a by-students-for-students program that bolsters goals with learning, mentoring and a test site.
CES was created by former Regional School Unit 9 teacher Bonita Lehigh and a small group of students from the business class she taught at Foster Career and Technical Education Center. Lehigh left her position this summer to focus on CES full time.
Currently CES is carved out of a piece of Lehigh’s property in New Sharon. The center is working with four students from Mt. Blue High School in addition to those that are helping with phase two of CES: moving to a new location. Lehigh said the center will be geared towards second year students and older who are interested in learning more about running a business. For example, Lehigh said, a student who takes a plumbing course might then be interested in learning how to start their own business using those skills. That’s when they could sign up for a course at CES, which will be ideally located close to Mt. Blue Campus for easy access and to possibly use buses for transportation.
“A lot of kids are intimidated by the school. Our hope is that having CES off campus would be empowering for them,” Lehigh said.
CES would have no limits as far as what students could pursue. Lehigh mentioned everything from a ropes course to Finnish saunas. While working on their projects, students would have opportunities to earn money through CES by signing up for small, short-term jobs such as dog walking, delivering groceries and babysitting.
Lehigh and her team have been working on writing grants and securing funding for phase two of the project which would be moving to a location in Farmington. CES board members are meeting this week for the first time. Lehigh said the next steps will be a marketing campaign to kick off a large fundraising effort.
“CES will be a truly immersive experience for students. They’ll be their own boss,” she said.
To learn more about The Center for Entrepreneurial Studies click here.
I had a friend who was an Ophthalmologist; he told me he learned a lot in school about eyes but never about how to run a business. He is now working for someone else instead of running his own office.
I taught students how to cut wood and operate logging equipment for twelve years and I wish I had had access to a program like this at the time. I like the comment about the plumber.
I wish you the best of luck in this endeavor, I suspect your clients/students will struggle to fund themselves through the process you are creating for them, but somehow I suspect you have a business plan already in mind.
Dear John,
Thank you so much for your kind comments! We really hope that people take a look at our website and support this great project. The most beautiful part of it is that it was “Created by Students for Students”. I just advised and did some heavy lifting. Our website probably isn’t perfect but it is pretty solid. If anyone would like to learn more, please visit: http://www.cesmaine.com. We are hoping to address community issues that my former students and I discussed at length because kids genuinely care about one another. While we have bad issues like many rural communities, we also have amazing characteristics. (We flushed this out in a powerpoint which is on the website). The tragedy at LEAP proved we have an amazing community. We just need a location in the purview of the community where kids can use space to create and collaborate with ease with UMF students, the public, business members, elementary students, middle school students, and so on. We envision a Boys and Girls Club for future Entrepreneurs where kids can go during the day AND eventually from 2:00-5:00 p.m. We hope to evolve it so students could possibly catch the late school bus home eliminating transportation barriers and bored kids after school. The site will focus on agriculture, manufacturing, shared support offices, culinary center, youth homelessness (tiny houses built by students), and health and recreation. All major undertakings. The big great piece to all of this is that our business community IS coming together on this. I have to thank so many businesses that have stepped up their support of the concept including Skowhegan Savings Bank, Farmington Ford, Maine Retirement Annuities, New Beginnings Homeless Shelter, Western Maine Community Action, my former colleagues and many more. Thank you very much to everyone!
Learning a skill, trade or profession is a huge undertaking for students, and so is starting and running a business, that’s what makes CES the perfect place to connect the two. I am so incredibly excited to see what’s to come for CES!
This is an excellent opportunity for real growth in our area. I can’t wait to see the future of it.
I am thrilled that Center for Entrepreneurial Studies will serve students and community members in our area. This has been a need for many years and it is nice that we have a dedicated, intelligent, caring and innovative Founder/Executive Director to head up this project. Bonita Lehigh has worked diligently with students and community members to establish project. Last year I was fortunate to have one of her students to help with our bookkeeping. She was very professional, competent and task orientated. I would say it was a win win situation for both the student and our business. Bonita had prepared her well for the position and I can’t say enough about how happy we were to work with the Entrepreneurial program. A strong advisory board has been formed and will be meeting next week. Three cheers for Bonita, her students and community for supporting this program.