Our faculty is composed of scholar entrepreneurs.  Each faculty member has deep experience in pursuing the American Dream, and also has established credentials as an excellent teacher and educator.  Our lead faculty include our co-founders, the Drs. Carland, Jim and JoAnn.  A Google search, or a Google Scholar search, on those names will immediately disclose the significance of their academic achievements.  In addition, they have co-founded a number of entrepreneurial ventures.  Their full resumes, or vitae in academic terms, are available for download to the left.

Jim and JoAnn are joined in this pursuit by many colleagues with impressive records and with much to teach students of entrepreneurship.  We will be posting a full list of their names and backgrounds in the near future.

Jo Ann's Teaching Philosophy

    To teach is to learn and to continue to learn is to truly live.  To teach, one dissects and conjoins concepts and theories in an effort to give understanding to others and from that process comes greater knowledge and focus for oneself.  Learning should be enjoyable.  To not know is frustration.  To understand is enlightenment. When learning becomes joy, actualization is complete.  When teachers can instill the joy of learning, they have achieved a tremendous goal, because they have bestowed not only knowledge but life skills.
    Over the years I have found that the true challenge is to seek to understand the motivations and the cognitive needs of individual students and to design approaches which can enhance that student's strengths and remediate that student's weaknesses.  Learning is not painful and good teaching is not pain inducing.  Learning is satisfying, fulfilling and simply fun.
    A major focus of my research and professional development has been learning how students learn.  What works for one will not necessarily work with another. Just as students learn by doing, teachers learn by teaching.  How I may transfer my knowledge to others so that they, too, may find success in their lifetime is my greatest challenge and my greatest concern.
    I now begin all my classes with an evaluation of the cognitive styles of the students and I design each class to accentuate the positives, mitigate the negatives, and focus on inculcating in each student a joy in pursuing continuous, lifetime enhancement of personal insight and skill.  Teaching students to be the best that they can be requires positive reinforcement, guidance, caring, and using the types of activities which emphasize their strengths in the process of learning while teaching students how to minimize their weaknesses.  This is why I evaluate my students each semester:  to find the optimal approach to learning for each class and to design activities to meet the individual learning styles present in each class.  This means using different methodologies for each class and even more different approaches for the same class the following semester.
    There is a trite, old cliche about three laborers at the construction site of a castle which illustrates my philosophy.  The three workers were asked one day by a passing stranger what they were doing.  The first worker mumbled tiredly that he was breaking up stones.  The second announced proudly that he was building a castle.  The third worker pondered a bit and responded that he was building a dream.
    Although a teacher must present facts for retention and bestow knowledge of the material in his or her field, the true teacher builds dreams.  Such construction comes from the sharing of knowledge with the students, but more fully from the sharing of self and thereby instilling the joy of discovery in each student.  There is no better way to help students truly become the best that they can be.
    Educere, to lead out, is a simple phrase for a complex process.  One cannot grow within oneself.  A talent hidden cannot flourish, but wilts and dies for lack of encouragement.  A master teacher's mission is to bring out the talents, the dreams, the ambitions, the needs and the desires of students and help to make them real. There is no perfect example, no perfect model, no one portrait for teacher.  The ways are as many as there are students to lead, to reach, to touch, to discover.  My approach is to focus on my students as individuals;  to provide each with visible, tangible, evidence of his or her development throughout the course;  and to ensure that each experiences the joy of grappling with the application of knowledge to new and unexplored areas.  This sense of success builds self confidence while demonstrating the value of personal growth:  attributes which transcend the bounds of the classroom and which will support a student throughout life.
    The principal focus of all my teaching methods is the development of a searching mind.  Enriched lives can only be achieved through continued exploration.  The single tiny drop from the sea of knowledge is all that can be passed in a single class.  But, the drive to learn can lead students in a search for excellence in their chosen fields, and, more importantly, can enhance the quality of their lives.  I don't have all the answers.  Consequently, I can't give my students the correct response to all of life's challenges.  I can serve as a guide.  I can show them a vision of life's offerings and help them to understand the rewards attendant on their striving to achieve the vision.
    To teach is also to learn.  A teacher gains ever increasing knowledge in striving to pass the dream to others and learns from those with whom he or she shares. Teaching is learning:  a never ending process of discovery, sharing, rethinking, and living.  It is this precept which keeps me vital and energized year after year.  I feel that teaching is my life's work and a task at which I must excel.  I feel that there is no greater profession than that of shaping minds and preparing people for productive lives.  I have endeavored in my classes to not only disseminate knowledge but to create a love of learning.
    Teaching is very much of an art which must be nurtured in order to grow.  Continued growth requires mandatory refinement, learning, and questioning.  The measuring stick of my success is how well I have truly succeeded with my students, not just how well they have earned their grades, but how well I have extended their envelope for learning on into the future.  Seeing students grow and watching them become successful has always inspired me to try harder.  My students often contact me years after leaving with kind words and just to let me know how they are doing.  To be remembered after graduation is sufficient impetus for me to continue to strive;  for I grow as they grow.


    I believe that the pursuit of knowledge is the highest calling of intelligent beings. It is that pursuit which delineates sapience from bestiality. It is no accident that humans are afflicted with an insatiable curiosity. It is this burning need to know, this drive to understand, which has led to the advancement of the human race and to the attainment of whatever success mankind has enjoyed. Nevertheless, it is not for the enhancement of society that the pursuit of knowledge exists. It exists for the satisfaction of the soul. Aids to humanity, though immensely satisfying, are but the tangible and visible tip of a vast iceberg of spiritual rewards which derive from the exercise and development of the mind. The gifts of God are a dissatisfaction with the Why and How of things; a thirst for a richer understanding; and, a questioning nature.
    Those of us who have more fully embraced the quest of knowledge find ourselves endowed with a missionary zeal to communicate to others the joy of that quest. We are willing to endure any hardship, undergo any apprenticeship, to be able to experience the catharsis of teaching. Teaching is not a profession; it is not an avocation; it is an apotheosis. To say that teaching is the highest calling of mankind begs the issue for it implies that the reward for teaching resides in the approbation of society. It does not. The rewards of teaching rest in the eyes of a student who first grasps a concept, in the voice of a student who exclaims, "I see!" and more fully in the soul of a student who asks, "But, Why!"