By Ashley Gessel
A BYU business professor''s research into eliminating poverty is the basis for a new course.
MBA class, 632 Social Entrepreneurship, is based on Marriott School Professor Warner Woodworth''s award-winning research on battling poverty throughout the world.
The Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring exceptional business faculty, received 124 nominations of professors who integrate social issues in their classroom. Woodworth, along with six other winners, received this prestigious international award at the end of 2007.
Former Marriott School student Lisa Jones Christensen nominated Woodworth; Christensen is currently an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina.
Woodworth''s specific award, External Impact, was awarded by the Institute because of his effort to transform business classes by teaching how business models can improve impoverished societies through such practices as micro-credit.
Students interested in managing successful mission-driven for-profit and nonprofit ventures should take advantage of this class, which covers strategies, pitfalls, and tools for all types of entrepreneurships, Woodworth said. Students don''t need to be in the MBA program or a business major, but they should want to change the world, he said.
He explained that there are students who come to him from the nursing program who want to be involved in world health, engineers who have a desire to create electricity in third world countries and return missionaries who want to fulfill their promises to the people they served; but all don''t know how to do it.
'The class suggests the power of one,' Woodworth said. 'I help them realize who they are and what they can do.'
By this kind of open enrollment, the class is composed of half MBA students and then filled with MPAs and undergraduates; it is a three-credit course taught on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. With a capacity of 30, the class currently has eight spots open, which Woodworth said he hopes will be filled by Friday''s add/drop deadline.
'I want people to build credibility at the university as a service-oriented college to the world,' Woodworth said. 'The class is not really a course, it''s a mission.'