Entrepreneurship Research (E-Research) for NEWPATH Students

One of the key elements of the NEWPATH program is the training in entrepreneurial principles and practices that it provides to students. Based on our initial two years of experience in the program, we are introducing an additional component to this training. This component will consist of students in the program researching various topics related to IT-entrepreneurship and writing papers reporting results of their research. The best of these papers will be collected and made available to all students in the program.

The e-research component will be structured as follows. Near the end of each quarter, students in the program may apply to participate in e-research during the next quarter. The student has to identify a particular topic related to IT-entrepreneurship that would be suitable for such research. During the quarter in which the student engages in the research and writing the paper, he or she will be eligible to receive financial support of $10 per hour for work of up to five hours per week; this support for undergraduate research will come from NSF funds that have been reserved for supporting students in the program. In practice, it is expected that the student will probably spend more than five hours on the work in some weeks and less than five in other weeks. The student must sign up as an undergraduate student employee and fill out the timesheet each week reporting on the (approximate) number of hours worked during that week. The number of hours reported for each week can vary within reason and as long as the total for the quarter does not exceed 50 hours (averaging 5 hours per week). Students should also note that hours cannot be "carried forward" to future quarters. A student coordinator, one of the NEWPATH students, will be appointed each quarter to coordinate this activity and ensuring that students are making progress toward completing their papers. Any NEWPATH student who wants become e-research coordinator should contact Prof. David Lee.

The NEWPATH faculty are in the process of developing a suitable rubric for the evaluation of papers that students write as part of this program. The purpose of the evaluation is three-fold. First, it will give useful feedback to individual students on the quality of their work, its strengths as well as possible suggestions for improvements. Second, it will help NEWPATH faculty determine whether the student's funding for undergradute research should be continued for future quarters. Third, the faculty intend to create an (on-line) binder containing the best papers as a valuable resource for students in the program and the evaluation will help determine which papers to include in the binder.

Selected presentations and papers; (and a much older version).

Support for participation in conferences etc.: In order to further help students develop their entrepreneurial skills, the program will fund any NEWPATH student who is actively participating in NEWPATH up to $1500 to attend a conference related to IT-entrepreneurship or other entrepreneurship-related activity in which the student has an active role (presenting a paper, demo'ing a system etc.), subject to approval by NEWPATH faculty. Students who want to receive such support should contact Prof. Lee in a timely manner to allow for consideration of their request.