Stories & Updates

Editor's note: this is the second article in a series that  explores how the Horn Team practices entrepreneurship.

Taking stock of experiences over the last two weeks …

… No family spring break vacation in sunny, warm weather.

… Cancelled trip to Las Vegas with close friends I’ve known for more than 35 years.

… Paused daily routine of putting my daughter on the school bus and heading to the office.

… Zero spontaneous, face-to-face interaction with the people with whom I enjoy working.

… makes it clear that COVID-19 has caused stock outs in the kitchen cupboards of my life. The sugar – what I was most looking forward to – is gone. And so is the ketchup – the enjoyable, mundane staples of daily life. You’re no doubt missing similar things, and perhaps even more.

I asked Dan Freeman, Horn's founding director, to write this article a couple weeks ago; but Dan, like all of us, has been in the midst of turmoil, chaos and upheaval. I kept saying “Dan, write about entrepreneurial mindset, adapting to rapid change, resilience…just write something.” So, after urging, nudging, prodding, I decided to write it. Here it goes:

University of Delaware alum Mike Baerga teamed up with his grandmother to create a state-funded student transportation service which helps transport displaced students to and from school.

Jaeah Yoo, Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2021, was inspired to help Puerto Rico recover from natural disaster and traveled to the United States territory in conjunction with Blue Hen Leadership Program (BHLP) and Community Collaborations to help repair and restore the local community around San Juan. Jaeah’s registered student organization (RSO), People for Puerto Rico and BHLP brought a team of more than 25 students and built authentic relationships while delivering community impact. 

For University of Delaware entrepreneurs in the research fields of science, technology, engineering, and math, the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps) provides innovators with the opportunity to take their projects from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Career shifts for Mike Rinkunas have meant doing everything from hanging out of a helicopter with a video camera, to interviewing Lance Armstrong at the Boston Marathon. Even when not working, Rinkunas continues to explore new things to try, most recently becoming a licensed train conductor and locomotive engineer in his spare time.

Horn Entrepreneurship invites all current University of Delaware students to attend the spring pitch party! The spring pitch party is a biannual event hosted by Horn Entrepreneurship in which students are given 90 seconds to pitch their most interesting business ideas to a small group of judges and attendees with an opportunity to win a prize. This event is a perfect way for UD students of any background to get experience with pitching business ideas and getting their creative propositions out there. 

(From left to right, Sierra RyanWallick, Bryce Fender, Abdul Musa, Casey Scott, Danielle Fisher, and Lilly Checkoff)

One recent graduate and five students, most of whom belong to University of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship and others from the Department of Human Development & Family Sciences (HDFS), College of Arts and Sciences and the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, have been accepted into the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU) this year. A program launched by former president Bill Clinton in 2007, CGIU seeks to engage the next generation of leaders on college campuses as they address the world’s most pressing challenges.

Ted Foltyn, adjunct professor for the Horn Entrepreneurship program, challenged his ENTR452 students last semester to raise money for Friends 4 Friends (F4F), an on-campus organization that unites students to remind them that in a world full of pressure and stress, there is always someone there to talk to. The successes of the campaign have inspired the student-run group to continue the selling challenge this semester.