Alina Hussey earned course credit while pursuing her entrepreneurial dreams through a partnership between the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and the Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre (EPICentre).
Hussey is the first student to combine participation in the EPIC Discovery Program with coursework in the Ways of Doing class, which provided her workshops in wellbeing, interpersonal communications, organizational theory, online networking, project management, and experiential learning.
Instructor Tim Brunet promotes skills his students need to complete projects in the community, which allowed Hussey to explore her business idea: Zoom Yoga, an online service offering personalized one-on-one yoga sessions. She had completed 200 hours of training in Rishikesh, India, to become a yoga instructor.
“Completing the Ways of Doing while being enrolled in the Discovery Program greatly enhanced my learning experience,” she says. “Being in the class taught me the skills to network while the EPICentre provided me with the opportunities to put my new knowledge into practice.
“Since I was able to get class credit for the Discovery Program experience, I was able to prioritize my entrepreneurial dreams and give it much more attention and care than if I was doing it on top of five courses.”
EPICentre director Wen Teoh says the partnership has proven its value: “Being able to test out their business ideas while earning course credit is a win-win for entrepreneurial students.”
Brunet says that combination allows his students to access networks not usually associated with academic courses.
“What makes the new partnership so enriching is that it puts students’ imagined futures into practice and creates real outcomes so they create opportunities for new knowledge and growth,” he says.
More information about the EPIC Discovery Program is available by emailing EPICDiscovery@uwindsor.ca.