Lorinda Forrest, Small Business/Entrepreneurship Deputy Sector Navigator for the Central Valley/Mother Lode Region (hosted at San Joaquin Delta College) was presented with the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) 2016 Impact Award. The ceremony took place October 9 at the NACCE national conference at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento.
The NACCE Impact Awards honor faculty and staff members who have shown excellence in providing entrepreneurial education and technical assistance to small businesses in their communities.
“Lorinda has made entrepreneurial collaboration among colleges and high schools the norm in our region,” said Salvador Vargas, Delta’s Dean of Career Technical Education and Workforce Development. “Her tireless work provides the opportunity to impart entrepreneurial practices as a learning method. Her talents and achievements are many. This is a well-deserved recognition.”
“Receiving the Impact Award is definitely an honor,” said Lorinda Forrest. “I've been fortunate to create programs, workshops, and an entrepreneur resources sharing website at Delta College and the Central Valley. These resources have blossomed statewide and nationwide.”
Starting a small business is no easy task. Lorinda is excited about ongoing and future efforts to assist classroom instruction for local entrepreneurs. One such project is the Entrepreneurship Curriculum Resources sharing website, EshipEducator.com. As the site homepage says: Solid entrepreneurship curriculum is fun. Creating your own curriculum is not.
That philosophy inspired a website which allows faculty to upload and share best-practice curriculum content for classroom use. The site is also intended for Career Transfer Education (CTE) instructors who want to infuse entrepreneurship into the mindset of their students. EshipEducator users can rate content, save content for future classroom use, and request videos. “This is best-practice sharing at its finest,” says Forrest. “The beauty is that already busy faculty do not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when it comes to new curriculum.” Forrest hopes the site will become available nationally via NACCE membership. Currently, educators can sign up to join EshipEducator, but need to be validated by a current user.
Another big project is the Contextualized Entrepreneur Curriculum Collaborative. The project’s goal is to broaden access to entrepreneurship curriculum across disciplines, such as Career Technical Education programs.
Forrest says employment trends are changing. Promoting and marketing your job skills as an entrepreneur will become a necessity. “Recent studies show by 2020, 40% of all workers will be temporary contract or freelancers. This means the ‘gig economy’ is a reality. We are recruiting interested entrepreneur and CTE faculty as a collaborative to develop entrepreneur curriculum specific to CTE disciplines.” Forrest hopes eventually that this curriculum can be shared on the EshipEducator website.
Lorinda Forrest’s passion for sharing entrepreneurial knowledge through educational is clear. “Sharing entrepreneurial expertise and making it available to our teachers, students and communities is essential for the good of our economy. It brings to mind the metaphor: A rising tide lifts all boats.”