Harker’s business and entrepreneurship teachers traveled to Chicago for the INCubatoredu National Summit in July. Michael Acheatel and Juston Glass joined more than 125 other teachers from across the country at the event, designed to help teachers establish incubator curriculum in their respective schools. “Michael, who leads Harker’s incubator program, and I, along with a couple other teammate teachers from other states, were one of two teams out of 16 selected to present in front of the group,” said Glass. “We had to essentially go through the curriculum that our students would follow, and then the top presentations got to ‘pitch’ their idea (a personal financial scorecard and services product called ‘Nudge’).”

Glass noted, “It was a great experience, especially for Harker to be recognized as the top pitch of the conference by the judges in our first year attending! At the culminating event, the teachers heard pitches from the top five student companies who were competing for $20,000 in seed funding. Now that we are a part of the program, we hope to bring a student team of our own next year.”

Harker tried out an incubator program last summer and it was so successful, it has been converted into a regular curriculum class starting in fall 2018. Read more about last year’s program here.

“We are super excited to bring this program to our students and what experiences it will bring them as they journey with the program at Harker,” said Glass.