To provide more opportunities out of the classroom, DePaul professor Patrick J. Murphy launched the Social Enterprise Collaborative in the fall of 2012, which allows MBA students to go beyond the work in his Social Entrepreneurship class.
“The Social Enterprise Collaborative is a community of students and Chicago social entrepreneurs,” Murphy said.
The Social Enterprise Collaborative is based directly on the MBA class in terms of its conceptual basis and its outreach model, Murphy said. The collaborative has an advisory board with members from organizations such as The Field Museum, Sweet Beginnings and Cibola. The advisory board collaborates with Murphy by providing expert knowledge.
“My goal is to build the initiative into a Center for Social Enterprise,” Murphy said.
Faculty colleagues such as Professor of Management Harold P. Welsch strongly supported the idea. Over the last year the Social Enterprise Collaborative received more than $8,500 in donations to support their events, internships and scholarships.
DePaul students and members of the Chicago social entrepreneurial community complement each other because the students want to get involved in this community in order to grow and learn, and the community itself needs the intelligence, innovative approaches and energy of the students. Murphy said that is why he calls it collaborative.
Daniel Speers, 29, a DePaul MBA student, said he loves the Social Enterprise Collaborative.
“They have really high-quality events with great turnouts, and they are constantly expanding their projects and involvement with students,” Speers said. “I only wish they were around when I first started the program.”
Keith Earl Weber II, 24, a recent graduate of DePaul, said he believes the Social Enterprise Collaborative has the potential to become a defining feature of the DePaul landscape.
“The amount of passion and drive that the Social Enterprise Collaborative brings together in their events is three to four times greater than any group or event I have been to,” Weber said.
The Social Enterprise Collaborative started from the Social Entrepreneurship MBA class, which was launched in 2009 by Professor Murphy. It is an elective class that is offered once per year.
Murphy was inspired to start the class when he went with a team of DePaul MBA students as their advisor to participate in a consulting competition in New Orleans. He realized that DePaul and its entrepreneurship program successfully prepared them to offer social entrepreneurship opportunities.
Some students who completed the class have launched their own ventures after graduating. Murphy says that some of his students have launched their own ventures and made strong presence around Chicago in places like 1871 and The Impact Engine.
The students not only study concepts in class, but they are also put in situations facing real challenges. The students are put into consulting teams and work with actual clients. During spring 2013, students worked with Misericordia, Calumet City Heritage and Streetwise on concepts such as pricing strategies, brand awareness and strategic growth strategies.
“The biggest advantage of this class is that you will have the opportunity to gain real-world experience that you can use the rest of your life and even put on your resume,” Speers said.
Murphy said that students get real world experience when they start thinking in ways that will lead them into entrepreneurship themselves. Around 80 graduate and undergraduate students have completed the Social Entrepreneurship class since 2009.
“The passion and drive radiates from Patrick Murphy and his guest speakers to such a point that I left every one of his classes excited and champing at the bit to get back home and work on my own social venture,” Weber said.
For Weber, the Social Entrepreneurship MBA class was difficult, and “to some, near impossible” due to extensive material to cover in class, large group projects that involves meeting with actual clients and helping solve their problems.
“It’s going to be a rough and tough ride, but let me tell you, it’s worth it,” Weber said.
Speers agrees.
“The class is a great example of an elective that allows you to apply what you’re learning in the classroom to real-world situations and make connections along the way,” Speers said.