Students Dive into Real-World Entrepreneurship Experiences at Lehigh Silicon Valley 2018

Fifty-six Lehigh students kicked off 2018 with their participation in the seventh annual LehighSiliconValley, an immersive and highly selective three-credit course set in California’s Silicon Valley. Presented by Lehigh University and the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation, LehighSiliconValley allows students to meet with and learn from experts, entrepreneurs, inventors, venture capital investors, product design experts and others during a rich real-world experience designed to enhance students’ own entrepreneurial ventures.


The first half of the program was based in the Lehigh@NasdaqCenter space in the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, located in San Francisco’s financial district. Lehigh@NasdaqCenter is an academic-in-residence collaboration between Lehigh University and the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center. There, students spent time with key players in the venture community and participated in site visits to companies including Lunar Design, Boost VC, Adobe, Zipline and Bullpen Capital. Students then divided into pre-selected tracks—Design Thinking, FinTech and Software Engineering—for a more in-depth experience with experts in each particular field.


“It is common knowledge that college education in its traditional lecture format, even at an institution as reputable as Lehigh University, often struggles with bridging the seemingly large gap between classroom material and its real world applications,” wrote computer science and engineering student Tinotenda Petros ’20 on the LehighSiliconValley student blog. “The LehighSiliconValley program is one of the best ways that Lehigh University closes this gap particularly in the areas of entrepreneurship and technology. Over the week I have been in the LSV program, the most rewarding realizations I have had are those that have helped me appreciate my classroom material better and see why and how that material applies in the real world.”


For more photos of the event, visit Lehigh’s Tumblr page.


Photos by Christa Neu

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