EPS 1002: LEADING YOUR START UP

3 Credits course for Humanities and Entrepreneurship Certificate Students Only

Leading Your Startup builds on groundwork laid in Transformation Through Entrepreneurial Leadership, with units on business essentials; designing SMART goals, entrepreneurial leadership, customer discovery, competition, brand design, marketing, sales, data for decision making, finance, business models, and developing a business plan. This course concludes the four-course sequence in entrepreneurial leadership and prepares students to seize opportunities either when they return to their communities, post-incarceration, or if they remain incarcerated.

In this hands-on business course, student will gain critical experience by focusing on how they can create value by developing a SMART (Specific, Measurables, Actionable, Realistic, Time-based) business plan that addresses important customer needs. Working individually or in teams of two, students will learn how to view the customer engagement experience through the eyes of their target market to effectively build a sustainable brand. They will also evaluate the feasibility of their own and their peers' business ideas, work with Babson students to conduct primary market research, and develop a business model. The approach of this course is entrepreneurial in nature with the understanding that students will look at a variety of ways that they can seize the identified problem or opportunity identified.
The first half of the course focuses on learning how to actively listen to, define, and respond to evolving consumer needs. Next, they will use this knowledge in the second half of the class to develop a SMART business action plan that describes how they will engage customers and create traction using a variety of channels that align with identified customer behaviors, interests, and attitudes.
While students will not likely launch their business (profit or non-profit) during the class, it must be realistic and actionable. The business might reflect the idea that they identified during Transformation through Entrepreneurial Leadership or be an entirely new idea. In addition to developing the business model, they will identify key performance indicators, and define metrics and milestones related to their business' success. They will also develop a marketing campaign that will engage prospects and entice them to interact with the business/organization.
The course focuses on business and marketing frameworks, best practices and learning through class discussions, articles, customer primary research, and the course book. They will be challenged to apply the topics to their business and their peers' businesses. As students focus on a solution or business that inspires them, they will learn how to assess the feasibility of their idea, taking it from vision to reality. The course concludes with the students' final deliverable, a SMART Business Plan that includes:
- Business Model Canvas
- SMART Business Action Plan
- Marketing Campaign
- Startup Budget
- Customer Persona

The course is offered over 12 weeks with classes held in person approximately once a week for 3 hours. The course is experientially-based, providing students with feedback and an opportunity to build and reflect on their individual skills. Students will engage in interactive sessions with Babson faculty and be supported by Babson students; work on an individual (or in teams of 2) entrepreneurship projects; and discover how Babson's entrepreneurship methodology, Entrepreneurial Thought and Action (ET&A), applies to their individual entrepreneurial journey.

Prerequiste: Course is for Humanities and Entrepreneurship students only

MSM6101 LEAP

MSEL Course

4.5 Credits

LEAP is a yearlong experiential course and serves as the foundation for the MSM program. The course is designed as an integrated learning experience that integrates design, entrepreneurship, and organizational behavior. The course is structured as a project-based course in which students will work in small, independent groups as they identify, design, develop, and prepare to launch a new opportunity. Students will develop a deep understanding of the intersection between design principles and fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Students also will learn how to work effectively in a group and organization, critical to the success of any new opportunity. Cocurricular resource sessions will provide students with essential awareness of legal issues that might impact the implementation of their projects.

QTM2600 Linear Algebra

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Linear Algebra provides the mathematical background for modern applications in statistics and data science. In this course we study linear algebra beginning with the classic but still essential application of solving systems of linear equations. We use this as an entry to think of the properties of high dimensional spaces, and the relationships between those spaces. Students will learn how to compute with matrices and see their application to diverse areas such as cryptography, image recognition, page rank in computer searches and establishing fair ranking and voting systems.

Prerequisites: AQM2000

LTA2050 LIT & VIS ART INTRM

4 Credits

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LVA2050 LIT & VIS ART INTRM

4 Credits

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LIT4620 Literature and Philosophy of Madness
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course engages the question of madness from a variety of angles. On the one hand, it considers the major theorists of insanity (Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze); and on the other, it considers the equally crucial works of supposedly "insane" writers themselves (Antonin Artaud, Unica Zurn, Vaslav Nijinsky). In doing so, we will trouble the many definitions and assumptions surrounding the category of madness and its problematic history of oppression. Ultimately, through this remarkable exchange across literary-philosophical frontiers, we will explore an immense world of visions and symptoms, including those of mania, schizophrenia, delusion, paranoia, melancholia, and obsession.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

LVA2446 Joy, Beauty, Justice: Literature of the Black Atlantic
Intermediate Liberal Arts_The Black Atlantic_ is a term used to describe the deep cultural and artistic connections among people of African descent relocated by the slave trade throughout the Americas and Europe. While it often evokes the horrors of the Middle Passage, slavery, and ongoing racist legacies, literature produced by African peoples in Africa, Europe, and the Americas also constitutes an archive of strength, resistance, and even joy in the face of injustice and oppression. We will read literature from the Black Atlantic with this transformative potential in mind. Beginning with the slave narrative, the course will sample literary production from the three continents, noting shared formal and imaginative characteristics, and ending with the most vibrant work by contemporary literary artists of the African diaspora.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1000 or RHT1000)

LTA2074 Literature of Witness
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThe film Ararat, by Atom Egoyan, contains testimony from a woman who has witnessed a massacre of young brides. She asks, "Now that I have seen this event, how shall I dig out these eyes of mine?"

This woman occupies the most direct position-the eyewitness-in relation to an extreme event; however, the question of witnessing also extends to all of us who encounter images and stories of atrocities in our everyday lives. We will trace the concept of witnessing in philosophical, legal, and human rights contexts before turning to novels and other literature of witness by international writers such as Pat Barker, Nadine Gordimer, Gunter Grass, Primo Levi, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Toni Morrison, and Virginia Woolf in order to investigate the following questions: What kinds of events generate or require witnesses, and how does witnessing differ from simply seeing? What effects does the event have upon the witness, and vice versa? What does it mean for literature to act as a kind of witness? How can literature ethically represent or "witness" extreme events? What responsibilities do we have to serve as witnesses to extreme global events, and what do we do with the energy created by our witnessing of such events?

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LTA2029 Literatures of Empire and Beyond
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsEmpires have been built and toppled all over the world since the beginning of recorded history, and literature has served both in the building and in the toppling. This course begins by examining 19th century imperialism with a focus on European colonization of territories in Africa and South Asia; moves through the nationalist movements that arguably brought political but not economic independence or prosperity to these places; and concludes by examining the shape of the global landscape today with its "remote control" empires that work through markets and information channels rather than territory and raw resources. We will explore these great geopolitical shifts by studying literature and film from European, African, and South Asian perspectives that can reveal the many perspectives on the impacts of cultural, political, and economic contact through imperialism.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

LTA2004 Love, Sex and the Family in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Literature
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts Credits_First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage_. This childhood ditty seems to inculcate the _right_ order of things in the act of family-making in America. But lives played out in times of cultural transition aren't always as neat as nursery rhymes. Mid-twentieth-century America was characterized by changing gender roles and definitions, geographic and demographic shifts, war, and burgeoning technology, among other things. This course looks at fiction and drama to see how great American authors such as Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor and Richard Yates portrayed and, perhaps, shaped the mid-century American understanding of love, sex, and family. We will supplement literary readings with relevant non-fiction from the time period. Students will propose, research, and develop a major essay about an author and/or a concept related to the course materials. Students will also formally present their ideas to the class.

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)