Submitted by Jill C. McGee.
Grantland Rice IV.
Grantland Rice IV will take on the community champion role of this venture. Mr. Rice is the current chief operating officer at Cobbs Allen, a risk management-consulting firm headquartered in Birmingham. He received his masters of accountancy in 2007 from Auburn University. Mr. Rice is a 2002 alumnus of MBHS and was involved with the high school’s business department during his tenure receiving the outstanding business student award his senior year.
He currently serves on the Mountain Brook School’s Career Tech Advisory Committee. His involvement and support of the school system has now come full circle, as Mr. Rice will take on the voluntary role of community champion, as the high school’s business department will launch their INCubatoredu program in the fall of 2018.
Rice is involved with the Birmingham Venture Club and has experience serving as a consultant with many start-up and established business. He and his wife Lauren live in Crestline with their four children.
Mr. Rice said, “I am very excited to help launch the incubator program at the high school. Birmingham has such a wealth of business talent and I’m looking forward to connecting experienced business leaders with the students.”
The incubator is a partnership with Uncharted Learning and MBHS is the first high school in the state to launch this program. INCubatoredu is a popular high school entrepreneurship course where student teams create new product and service innovations. In the course, student teams compete to take business ideas from concept to successful funding in an incubator environment designed to replicate real entrepreneurial challenges. In the process, students are grounded in many of the critical skills vital for successful business building — including collaboration, adaptability, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. Community involvement is essential in the success of this program.
“We are very excited to partner with business professionals in the Mountain Brook community to provide this startup experience for our students. We have bright, engaging students, who are constantly problem solving, and we have no doubt that they will be able to translate those skills to a successful business model. One of the great strengths of our high school is the support of our community, and we are thrilled to be able to partner with local business professional to bring their experience to our students and into our classrooms,” said Amanda Hood, MBHS principal.
The INCubatoredu program is seeking the following professional volunteers from our community:
Coaches- A subject matter expert who collaborates with the classroom teacher to help deliver the course curriculum. Time commitment would be one to five days a school year for one class period to help teach students relevant, foundational content. The course curriculum is based on lean methodology of marketing.
Mentors- Works with small student groups and advises them on how to hypothesis/test/iterate a specific business idea. Mentors would meet with groups once a month to help students learn how to find answers themselves and give them guidance on their product or service. The energy and effort will increase before key milestones such as the MVP pitch near the academic year’s midpoint and at the year’s end for Investor Pitch. All mentors will have to follow the school system guidelines for volunteers.
Board of Advisors- A group of volunteer business professionals and entrepreneurs who offer strategic direction to student teams. These volunteers will be in the class a minimum of two times in the school year: MVP Pitch and Final Pitch. The pitches will be in a shark tank environment where students could possibly gain funding from the advisors.
After an application process, 24 students were selected to be part of this inaugural course. The INCubator will be housed in the high school’s business department and will be taught by Lori Beasley, Amber Benson, Brooke Hawkins and Jill C. McGee.
Please join Mr. Rice and the MBHS business department as they host an informational meet and greet on Wednesday, May 23 at 5:30 p.m. at MBHS. Please email Brooke Hawkins at hawkinsb@mtnbrook.k12.al.us for more information.
-Submitted by Jill C. McGee
