Program News
Wachovia Scholars "See What Business is Like"
Brian Rivers, a 17-year-old rising senior at Richland Northeast High School in Columbia, wanted to participate in the first " Wachovia Scholars Business at Moore" camp June 16-22 "to see what business is like."
After three days, he's enjoying the camp so much that he's now seriously considering studying business when he gets to college. "It's [the Business at Moore camp] a great program," says Rivers, who is African American.
He is one of 30 minority students – mainly African American, Hispanic, and Asian American – attending the camp, which introduces them to the study of business-related fields through a carefully tailored curriculum.
The all-expenses-paid Business at Moore camp is designed to help the students get a sense of college and gain new educational experiences. It is being funded by The Wachovia Foundation, which in 2006 committed $1 million to the Moore School to help fund the education of minorities and underrepresented students in South Carolina.
The Business at Moore students are living on the USC campus and attending classes in accounting, management, finance, marketing, computer information systems, and oral communications.
The classes are taught by USC faculty. Dr. Scott B. Jackson, assistant professor of accounting at Moore, says he is greatly enjoying the Business at Moore students. "These kids are off-the-charts smart,” he says. "It’s like teaching graduate students. You explain it once, and they get it."
The students chosen to attend from high schools around the state are high-performing and high-achieving. Any of the Business at Moore students who subsequently enroll in the Moore School are eligible for a Wachovia Scholars scholarship. Coupled with the state lottery tuition scholarships, the Wachovia scholarships can "potentially provide for 100 percent funding" of these students' education at USC, said Dr. Thomas J. Lopez, associate professor of accounting at Moore and coordinator of the summer camp.
"These are bright kids who will definitely go to college," says Lopez. "We want to keep them here in South Carolina. Why would we want to lose them?"
In addition to the classes, the Business at Moore students must prepare and participate in a team project, with each of the student teams putting together a business plan for a "business" they will invent. Each team has the use of a van so that, in addition to doing other types of research, the students (accompanied by a USC rising junior/senior or graduate student) can visit and interview business owners in Columbia who run similar businesses. On the final day of the camp, each team will present its plan, both in writing and orally.
The business invented by Brian Rivers' group is a campus taxicab service for inebriated people "to help stop all those drunk-driving accidents," says Rivers.
The Business at Moore camp is not all work, though. Movies, video games, bowling, and other outings are planned for the young people.
Jan Collins
June 2007