Wayne State Social Work adjunct faculty member and social entrepreneurship instructor, Marijo Upshaw, will be participating in the world-renowned Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneurship Research Bootcamp in May.

Founded by it's namesake, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is centered around the principle of innovation and the desire to fundamentally change people's lives through education and building enterprise as a vehicle to assist community members in realizing their dreams and stimulating the economy. In support of mission, the Foundation promotes all aspects of entrepreneurship including shaping the research agenda and hosts the two-day intensive Entrepreneurship Research Bootcamp in Kansas City, Missouri.

Entrepreneurs are important to the economy of the United States withbusiness startups accounting for most of the net job growth in the U.S., over 10 million jobs annually.¹ Research on what motivates individual entrepreneurs to act and how to support their efforts has garnered significant attention and is at the core of the Bootcamp, which is comprised of two components. The first portion of the Bootcamp brings together entrepreneurs, policy advocates, policymakers, and support organizations for discussions the complex needs of entrepreneurship. The second component involves intensive mentorship and development workshops focused on research for practical impact, evolving questions in the study of entrepreneurship, new opportunities for data and methods, and career trajectories in the field.

More than 300 business schools in the U.S. offer business students classes on entrepreneurship training and provide considerable resources for business plan development and access to business seed funding through business accelerator and pitch competitions. Although the entrepreneurial intentions of business students has been explored in entrepreneurial research, there are no known studies that have examined social work students' entrepreneurial intentions. Beyond economic interests, entrepreneurship has become important to solving protracted social problems, what is referred to as the field of social entrepreneurship, which fits well with core social work values and principles of social justice and service to others. Upshaw plans to address this gap in the social work research literature by focusing on the intersection of entrepreneurship and social work, with a specific focus on social workers' desires to start and grow transformative social ventures and movements. Upshaw is currently pursuing a Graduate Certificate on Research and Evaluation from the School and hopes the Bootcamp will assist her in gaining a better understanding of gaps in the research to craft a research agenda with application for the field of social work.

The driving force behind through the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative in the School, Upshaw and the Social Entrepreneurship Committee have answered the robust community interest for social entrepreneurship support with three recent endeavors including Social Work Build, a 9-week social entrepreneurship business planning course through Detroit's Build Institute. The Committee recently hosted Social Work Start-Up Story Night, an event highlighting the social venture start-ups of local leaders and recently partnered with Optimize Wayne to hold the 2nd annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference on April 5^th at the Mike Ilitch School of Business. The conference brought together over 240 social work and business community members, alumni, students, faculty and staff to hear from nationally-acclaimed keynote speaker Morgan Simon, author of Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change and over 20 area experts discussing business planning and development, community engagement, social enterprise and innovation.

"Despite its fit with core social work values and emphasis on serving marginalized groups and communities, social workers are underrepresented in the field of social entrepreneurship, especially in the realm of research", Upshaw noted. "A better understanding of social workers' entrepreneurial intentions can serve to document if there is potential demand for entrepreneurial education and inform curriculum development in the more than 800 accredited schools of social work in the U.S. that annually graduate 46,000 social workers. Social work academia has employed similar workforce development strategies to stimulate interest and increase the number of professional social workers seeking careers in child welfare and gerontology."

¹ Weins, J., & Jackson, C. (2015). The importance of young firms for economic growth. Kauffman Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/resources/entrepreneurship-policy-digest/the-importance-of-young-firms-for-economic-growth