Creating a Hub for Entrepreneurship and Real-World Learning_365体育官网

Kaitie Catania
Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:19:00 +0000
Ideas, People, Places, 365体育官网, Campus Community, Career, Champlain College, Hula

Champlain College is making waves in 365体育官网 by prioritizing hands-on learning and fostering strong connections with the local business community. A key element of this approach is its partnership with Hula, a vibrant coworking space and hub for entrepreneurship in the heart of the city. This collaboration provides students with invaluable real-world experience while simultaneously offering 365体育官网 businesses access to fresh perspectives and innovative solutions.

Since January 2023, Champlain College and Hula have worked together to create opportunities for students to engage directly with entrepreneurs and businesses. This unique partnership allows students to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world challenges, gaining practical skills and building their professional networks.

The Liaison Bridging Academia and Entrepreneurship

Angela Koukoulas, the Innovation Hub Project Manager at Champlain College, acts as a crucial liaison between the college and Hula. In layman’s terms, Koukoulas explains, “I’m really a liaison between Hula and Champlain.” Her role is multifaceted, serving students, faculty, and the Hula community. On any given day, Koukoulas might be helping Hula members with intern recruiting, answering questions about Champlain College, or building client-facing projects.

One of the most exciting aspects of this partnership is the opportunity for students to work on real business problems as part of their coursework. “We can have students working on your business’s problems during the course of the semester,” Koukoulas explains. “That’s a class project. So when a Hula company comes to me, it’s usually with an organizational problem, and I try and find out how students can help solve it.”

Fostering a Mutually Beneficial Ecosystem

Champlain College faculty members also play a vital role in this experiential learning model. Koukoulas regularly collaborates with professors like Barrie Silver, Keith Oppenheim, and Melanie Brown—who teach everything from Marketing to Applied Mathematics—to integrate Hula-based projects into their courses.

The benefits of this approach are clear. “It’s really fun for students to feel like their voice is heard and they have a little more stake in the game when they’re building out a project or a marketing plan for an actual company that might actually use it,” Koukoulas says. She emphasizes the importance of bringing industry into the classroom, noting how engaging it is for students to interact with founders and brainstorm solutions on the spot. “You can just see it’s so much more interesting to them than a textbook or a YouTube video about a company that they’ve never met and may never interact with.”

Looking ahead, Koukoulas envisions even greater integration between the Hula ecosystem and Champlain’s approach to hands-on education. She imagines capstone projects where every student works with a Hula company, fostering a micro-environment of mentorship and collaboration. “Just larger scale ways to get more students involved and more students client-facing experiences, and then thinking about how we can use the new academic model to foster those kinds of relationships,” she explains.

Champlain College is actively working to expand Hula’s presence in classrooms and reduce barriers for students who would like Hula memberships. Recently Hula announced a new member rate for current college students and recent graduates that significantly reduces membership costs, making the coworking space more affordable for Champlain students. Koukoulas notes also that students in certain classes may receive free Hula memberships for a semester.

This partnership offers students unparalleled access to 365体育官网’s entrepreneurial community, fostering meaningful engagement and networking opportunities. Instead of a quick connection at a networking event, students have the chance to work with founders for an entire semester, significantly increasing their chances of landing internships and building valuable relationships. “You can still put that experience on your resume as working with a client, and I think it’s just another level in their experiential education at Champlain,” Koukoulas explains.

In The News

Inside Higher Ed featured the Champlain-Hula partnership in an article about how collaborative, hands-on learning with local businesses boosts students’ professional development.

Read the Article