Initiatives with University of Guadalajara (UDG)

Seventy undergraduate students and professors from Guadalajara, Mexico, graduated December 2016 from a two-week intensive business course taught at Arizona State University by international educators from the school’s Global Launch platform. 

The University of Guadalajara students learned to build business plans as part of the Global Launch Transdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Program — which pairs business curriculum with guest speakers who are venture mentors and business experts. 

“I am learning a lot,” said Alexia Soto Ochoa, a third-year law major at UDG. “Everyone has been excited, but it has been a tougher course than many expected. So it has been two very intense weeks and two weeks of working really hard and spending all our time on the coursework.”

The students, most of whom do not have a business background, worked in teams of four to create a business plan, and then deliver a presentation on their last day of class to judges acting as investors, said Emilia Gracia, Global Launch lead international educator. The judges graded each business proposal and named a winner.

“The main focus of this program was to create a business for profit in teams,” said Gracia. “None of these students that we know of actually have entrepreneurship experience, so they’re all new to it.”