GSSM Students get Course in SC-based Tech Startups

Students from the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science & Mathematics (GSSM) will participate in StartupGSSM Day, a unique exploration of entrepreneurship and design thinking, both on campus and across the state on Aug. 22. Juniors will remain on GSSM’s Hartsville campus for an introduction to Design Thinking, a methodology and process for solving real-world problems developed and popularized by the IDEO Corporation and the Stanford University Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). An afternoon session, led by Dr. David Smith from the Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR), will challenge students to conceptualize and prototype an autonomous (self-driving) vehicle. A group of CU-ICAR graduate students will attend to share their expertise and to learn from the ideas of GSSM students. GSSM’s seniors, who participated in a similar design thinking workshop last year, will divide into three groups and travel to Charleston, Columbia and Greenville for tours of SC-based tech startups and other innovative businesses. These “tech treks” have been organized by economic development organizations in the three cities: the Charleston Digital Corridor, EngenuitySC and NEXT, respectively. During the tours, students will meet leaders at new tech startups and innovation centers as well as at established companies creating jobs in fields related to STEM. Destinations include Clemson’s Biomedical Engineering Innovation Campus (“CUBEInC”) in Greenville, the Tminus6 business accelerator in Columbia, and the software company Blackbaud in Charleston, among others. StartupGSSM Day is an initiative of GSSM’s BlueCross BlueShield Economics & Finance Institute. The Institute, which was founded to incorporate economics and entrepreneurship education with GSSM’s STEM-focused curriculum, features six-week summer internships in economics and entrepreneurship; advanced courses in entrepreneurship, accounting, finance and economics; and tech treks to Silicon Valley, New York and Boston.