Twelve students will spend their Spring Break escaping the bad weather. But instead of lounging on a beach, they will learn about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.

For the first time, the School of Information Studies will send a group of students to California for a Spring Break immersion experience. The students will visit various companies and learn the ins and outs of entrepreneurship.

‘We’re taking them to what is the original and the epitome of entrepreneurship, and we’re putting them in at the ground floor,’ said Julie Walas, director of undergraduate recruitment for the iSchool and a chaperone on the trip. ‘So these students get a true cultural immersion experience into what it really means to have the life of an entrepreneur.’

Students will be required to document their experience through a blog post while in the Valley, as well as through a reflective paper and a presentation once they’ve returned to campus, Walas said. They will also receive two credits for attending, she said.

Members of the group come from all majors and range from freshmen to graduate students. Students from Le Moyne College and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry are also attending. Many of the students attending have an entrepreneurial background — some have their own business or ideas for one, and others are just innovative thinkers, Walas said.

Shay Colson, director of West Coast relationships for the iSchool, came up with the idea for the program when he visited a startup incubator in San Francisco, where he is based. He said he realized if students had a chance to see these spaces, they would be more aware of resources they have available through the Syracuse Technology Garden and in Central New York.

Students will arrive in Mountain View, Calif. — in the heart of Silicon Valley — on Monday afternoon and stay until Friday. The trip originally cost $3,000, but with an outpouring of support from the board of advisers at the iSchool, who donated a significant amount from their own personal funds, the cost of the trip decreased significantly, Colson said.

Students only ended up paying $500 for the all-inclusive trip, which made it possible for students to go on the trip who wouldn’t have been able to go otherwise, Colson said.

The goal of the excursion is to get students networking with companies and to have them use the knowledge at SU and in their own lives. He has arranged for the students to meet with SU alumni who work for these enterprises, as well as managers and employees who represent the technical end of the business.

‘I want students to see the whole range of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Silicon Valley — everybody from two people and a laptop who just had the idea of getting started and their office is in a coffee shop, all the way up to the kings of Silicon Valley, like Facebook and Google,’ Colson said.

Visits will also be made to LinkedIn, eBay, Stanford University and a technical museum, and students will travel everywhere from San Francisco to San Jose, Colson said.

‘Entrepreneurship is not limited to any one school or any one program,’ Colson said. ‘Any student can engage in this community, and I think that really is demonstrated by the group that is making this trip.’

Jason Blanck, a television, radio and film graduate student, will go on the trip. Blanck is preparing to launch his e-commerce website, Brooder.com, in April and hopes the businesses in San Francisco will teach him more about startup culture and how to market his site.

Moné Clarke, a freshman information technology major, said she believes the experience will provide her with valuable information for the business side of her field.

‘If I ever want to start my own business, I can incorporate all of the tips that they gave or different ideas they used to start up,’ Clarke said. ‘I think I will have a foot up from other students, being that they didn’t have that firsthand experience at the companies.’

egsawyer@syr.edu

Published on March 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Liz: egsawyer@syr.edu | @3sawyer