English faculty member Paul Rogers refers to his involvement in social entrepreneurship as a project of personal passion. By being entrepreneurial, Rogers has played a major role in bringing the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, a 16-credit entrepreneurship studies minor and an introductory course - CHSS 310: Introduction to Entrepreneurship - to George Mason University. For the school, that’s quite a return on his personal investment.
Arriving at Mason in August 2008, Rogers was strictly an English professor, having recently received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Among his friends in the area was a member of Ashoka, a global organization supporting socially conscious entrepreneurship. Per his friend’s recommendation, Rogers started reading about the savvy, business-based approaches social entrepreneurs use to solve real-life problems. He immediately took up the cause.
"I kind of stumbled into this by accident," Rogers said. "But when I began to read, I found I was very inspired by their work. These are people working in the areas of human trafficking, economic development, poverty, health and education, and basically, they’re entrepreneurs with a bottom line of social change."
Rogers decided to try and incorporate this new subject into his work at Mason, in addition to being slated to teach at the school and become the associate director of the Northern Virginia Writing Project non-profit organization (he is now the director).
Throughout the 2008-2009 year, Rogers approached colleagues and Ashoka about a possible partnership between the school and the social change organization. Mason joined the Changemaker Campus Initiative in the fall of 2009, which meant putting together a detailed proposal to get social entrepreneurship ingrained in the school’s educational curriculum. Rogers worked on this project with Philip Auerswald, faculty of the School of Public Policy, and former colleague Alex Gudich-Yulle.
"The College of Humanities and Social Sciences and George Mason University both saw the potential in building a program centered around entrepreneurship that wasn’t in the business school," Rogers said. "The framework of the social entrepreneurship program provided a set of tools and strategies for students interested in making the world a better place."
In the spring of 2010, Rogers and his colleagues conducted a survey of about 400 Mason students. Although a small sample size, the results showed that 96 percent of respondents said they wanted more entrepreneurial coursework, while only 10 percent knew what social entrepreneurship was.
"We saw a demand from the students who wanted to make a difference," Rogers said. "We hope social entrepreneurship can be the catalyst to make that desire real."
Last spring was the first semester for both the entrepreneurship studies minor and the introductory entrepreneurship course, CHSS 310. In May came the Center for Social Entrepreneurship, which aims to solve global challenges by developing local leaders. Rogers is the faculty director of the center, while Greg Werkheiser, co-founder of the Phoenix Project, a Virginia-based social innovation organization (partnering with the center), is the managing director.
For now, social entrepreneurship and basic entrepreneurship skills have a solid foundation in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Rogers feels the programs offer much to students.
"I really feel strongly that we are going to be able to help students," Rogers said. "We are going to see more leaders come forth with pattern-changing ideas solving the global problems we’re facing today."
September 13, 2011
