The Rockefeller Center Launches New Social Entrepreneurship Course!

The Rockefeller Center is launching a new course starting this summer!

Listed as Public Policy 43, the course will provide an introduction to the theory and practice of social entrepreneurship, defined generally as the process of finding innovative, sustainable solutions to social problems and, more specifically for this course, social problems that are a cause or consequence of poverty. 

PBPL 43 has three objectives:

1. Students will understand the nature and causes of poverty, in both domestic and international contexts, as well as the emergence of social entrepreneurship as a means of addressing poverty.
2. Students will learn about the process of social innovation and the way social entrepreneurs have transformed those innovations into poverty-relieving initiatives. 
3. As a means of experiential learning, students will build on the first two objectives to identify manageable aspects of the larger problem of poverty and to propose, refine, and pitch a venture to address that aspect. 

The course culminates with teams of students developing business models for their own social entrepreneurship ventures. It is expected that the best of these ventures will be eligible for continued support from the Rockefeller Center and for additional development in the new campus Innovation Center. 

Director of the Rockefeller Center Andrew Samwick hopes the center will help students develop start-ups into enterprises with national or global potential. PBPL 43 is one part of Rockefeller's greater expansion into the realm of social entrepreneurship and innovation, which coincides with College President Phil Hanlon announced his hopes to expand entrepreneurship at Dartmouth.  

The Dartmouth published an article detailing all the recent additions to Rockefeller programming which can be read here.