Teach Babson's EPIC Youth Curriculum

Earn a Certificate in Youth Entrepreneurship Education

Fall 2024: November 5, 2024 – January 21, 2025

EPIC (Entrepreneurship Program for Innovators and Changemakers) is a youth entrepreneurship program that uses a proven method of teaching entrepreneurship to youth to increase resiliency and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. It helps middle school and high school students understand what it means to be an entrepreneur, empowering them to make positive change in their lives, communities, and the world.

Our Certificate program for middle and high school teachers and youth development professionals is offered in two formats: fully online (nine weeks) and hybrid (two weeks including two online sessions plus three days) onsite. You can earn a Certificate in Youth Entrepreneurship Education from Babson College, the No. 1 school for entrepreneurship. This certifies you to teach our EPIC curriculum to youth. Scroll to the bottom of the page to learn more about the current program being offered.

EPIC in Action

Program Overview

During the program, you will become certified to teach EPIC to youth while experiencing our EPIC curriculum for yourself. This experience allows you to gain valuable pedagogical tools that strengthen your teaching practice. You will:

• Learn how to empower young changemakers through entrepreneurship
• Receive coaching on how to deliver key entrepreneurship concepts to your students
• Get an educators’ toolkit that supports your ability to teach entrepreneurship
• Improve student success in your classroom/program
• Make a significant impact on future generations’ efforts towards a more equitable and sustainable world
• Participate in asynchronous and synchronous teaching through Babson’s online learning management system and weekly live webinars (90 minutes)
• Learn individually and through peer engagement with a team comprised of peers from around the world
• Become a lifetime member of a Community of Practice, where you can exchange ideas and insights with your peers

Why Your Students Need EPIC

The EPIC curriculum allows students to understand business concepts like opportunity identification, idea generation, prototyping, and marketing, while concurrently introducing them to social entrepreneurship and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals). Your students will:

• Identify a problem in their school or community and learn to address it guided by the Global Goals
• “Learn by doing,” working in teams to address the problem, developing entrepreneurial leadership capabilities and conflict resolution strategies
• Use Babson’s award-winning Entrepreneurial Thought & Action® methodology to design a solution that creates social and economic value

EPIC balances entrepreneurial concepts with social-emotional skills, or “soft skills.” At Babson, we refer to these skills as power skills. This combination helps youth develop grit, resiliency, a growth mindset, social awareness, social entrepreneurial intention, critical thinking, and self-reflection skills that can:

• Increase high school graduation rates
• Improve academic achievement
• Strengthen employability
• Raise earning potential
• Decrease mental health issues
• Decrease drug and alcohol use
• Reduce incarceration rates

Teaching entrepreneurship to youth via EPIC also develops young leaders who generate economic, social, and environmental value.

License EPIC for Your School

Schools and youth organizations have the option to license the EPIC curriculum so that certified teachers and youth leaders can help their students unlock their potential. For more information about licensing EPIC, email Dr. Beth Goldstein, Director, Youth Impact Lab.

While taking the Certificate program is a requirement for licensing the EPIC curriculum, you and your students benefit with or without licensing. The course increases your impact, understanding of entrepreneurial concepts, and ability to integrate these concepts into any subject or course. There is no requirement that educators who take this course commit to license or teach EPIC.

The EPIC curriculum can only be licensed to schools and youth education NGOs/Non-profits for internal non-commercial purposes. If you have any questions about this, please email the Youth Impact Lab.

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