In the heart of Winston-Salem, NC, the Summit School has spent the better part of the past 90 years recognizing the needs of the local community and rising to meet the challenge. A spirit of innovation is integral to who the school is and how they approach learning. It comes as no surprise, then, that Head of School Dr. Michael Ebeling encourages his faculty and staff to embrace innovation to help better prepare students for an ever-changing future. The Summit School Idea Shop – the umbrella for all innovation and entrepreneurship initiatives serving all 560 students at this coeducational day school – is a program born of this willingness to embrace change.
From the Margins to the Middle
When Ebeling got wind of a new Innovation Quarter being developed by Wake Forest University across the street from Summit School, he encouraged his team to seize the opportunity to develop new programming for their own students in PK through grade 9. Wake Forest University’s new innovation buildings serve as the host site of the university’s medical school, as well as housing other startups and companies engaging in innovative work.
Summit School partnered with Wake Forest University to offer co-curricular programs such as summer camps and afternoon enrichment classes within the Innovation Quarter. Students would visit the regenerative medicine office one week and then an architecture firm or nanotechnologies business the following week. Over the years, those programming opportunities grew into an emerging curriculum for the school.
This concept of testing content in co-curricular programs is something Director of Co-Curricular Programs Jeff Turner refers to as “margins to the middle.” It’s a means of vetting programs before implementing them into the day-school schedule.
From the beginning, Idea Shop co-lead Chris Culp, Summit School’s director of technology, has helped Turner with the development of this self-described “Petri dish” model. More than 20 years ago, Culp spearheaded the launch of Summit School’s robotics program, first introduced through the school’s summer camps. Camp registrations jumped exponentially, and the robotics program has since grown into its own dedicated space on campus. The robotics lab has evolved further into a design studio that has become a hub for developing products as part of Summit Ventures, a strand of the school’s entrepreneurship program.
This “margins to the middle” model has been repeated many times at Summit; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it works really well, or it simply sparks other ideas. It’s the willingness to try new things within the confines of a safety net that has proven to be the key to the program’s success.
Embracing Faculty Interests Leads to New Ventures
As lifetime learners, the faculty and staff at Summit have a variety of passions and talents. Culp and a fellow teacher explored beekeeping more than a decade ago. After taking courses, the duo brought bees to the Summit campus, leading to a school-sanctioned venture, Summit Honey. Students learn about the process of harvesting the honey, as well as how to jar, market, and sell it. The venture is now cash positive, returning revenue into the larger Idea Shop innovation and entrepreneurship program to support other new ventures.
Another faculty member grows hot peppers, which led to the highly popular Summit hot sauce venture. From crafting a product name and tagline – Death Drop: Experience Instant Regret – to designing labels and selling the product at yearly Summit Venture Markets, students are integral to the business-development process, alongside the support of faculty and staff.
As a signature capstone experience, Summit ninth graders visit the Costa Rican Cloud Forest each January. Over the years, students have worked on a coffee plantation or farm. This yearly program has evolved to incorporate a coffee roasting business. With the purchase of a coffee roasting machine, students learn the science of heat and timing to roast the beans to perfection, as well as how to market and sell the product.
The Idea Shop team also brainstorms ideas and then partners with teachers who would like employment at the school’s afternoon academy or over the summer. They build off the resources on campus, with the support of their school community and parent entrepreneurs, as well as the talents of the faculty and staff. For example, a team harvested wood from campus and used the school’s sawmill and drying kiln, made from an old greenhouse, to fabricate cutting boards in their design studio. The venture was an extremely popular revenue maker, leveraging the school’s onsite resources and talents.
What’s In It for the Students?
Students learn a great deal from an entrepreneurial endeavor because of the many subjects utilized. Students, of course, practice traditional classroom skills like research, writing, math, and science. They also practice the more difficult to teach skills that help ensure future success. Students learn how to work on a group project and collaborate with others, how to give up control and choose the best person for the job, how to solve a problem, how to turn intrinsic motivation into something bigger, and how to celebrate the wins and learn from the losses. Ultimately, students are being prepared for college and beyond by practicing those skills that are critical to success but that cannot be learned from a textbook.
The Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E) class, also under the umbrella of Summit School’s Idea Shop, introduces future career paths in a hands-on way. While eighth and ninth graders may not yet know which degree or career to pursue after high school graduation, the I&E course opens their eyes to fields such as entrepreneurship, product development and design, marketing and communications, sales, and business and finance.
For co-leads Culp and Turner, one of the aspirations of the I&E course is to make class fun. As students run the ventures, they are given increasing responsibility for tasks such as checking and replenishing stock. Allowing ventures to be as student-driven as possible gets traction with the students, who relish the opportunity to be treated with maturity. Summit School also houses a program for students with learning differences called Triad Academy. A large percentage of I&E students come from the Triad Academy program because many are creative thinkers who gravitate toward the creative freedom granted by entrepreneurial ventures.
Exponential Growth Leads to a Self-Sustaining Program
The first year Summit began the Innovation & Entrepreneurship class, only one student enrolled. The course focused on a bike program that collected and repaired used bikes and then distributed them to the local community. That ninth-grade service-learning project grew to become the Twin City Bike Collective, a 501(c)3 still housed at Summit. To date, the program has collected and repaired more than 1,500 bikes.
The second year of the I&E class enrolled seven students, followed by 15 the next year. For the 2024-2025 school year, more than 40 students registered for the course, which is part of an elective studio program. The I&E course is popular partly because student-led ventures support student motivation; that is, students are able to keep the profits of their businesses as part of the class. Some students donate a percentage of their proceeds to nonprofits. But, the course supports a student’s intrinsic motivation to do really well. Students must also pay for their business supplies, as well as a 20 percent fee to the Idea Shop. The Summit School business office appreciates that the program has become self-funding, which allows for the purchase of materials and equipment from venture revenues, such as a tiller that will support the school garden beds.
While the I&E course is open to Summit upper school students, the Idea Shop incorporates entrepreneurship and innovation in lower school too. Third graders are deeply involved in entrepreneurship through a unit on economics, participating in a scaled-down version of the I&E course. Third graders learn about branding, logos, and business plans. They meet entrepreneurs and visit a Summit parent-owned start-up lab. Third graders then develop their own age-appropriate products that they sell at the end-of-the-year Venture Market each May.
Planning for the Future
Part of the Summit School’s strategic plan is to thoroughly integrate entrepreneurship throughout the school, a plan still in the development phase. There are currently pockets of somewhat unrelated entrepreneurial or business topics, so the school aspires to clarify and create a scope and sequence for that.
Within the upper school I&E class, students participate in three different venture paths. In the first semester, students participate in Summit Ventures, home to the larger schoolwide enterprises such as Summit Honey. By the second semester, students have the option of pursuing their individual ventures, creating a product, and collecting the revenues to keep or donate. The third venture type, Venture Share, is relatively new. That project focuses on a large portion of the students in the class working on a new, common venture.
As the Idea Shop evolves, Turner and Culp are tentatively taking a step back to allow others to take the reins. Two upper school science teachers with space in their schedules will be leading the I&E course. Other faculty and staff also have a hand in the Idea Shop, from the development office, to IT and the business office. The big dream is to eventually have an entrepreneur-in-residence on staff who would ultimately spearhead the program.
Nearly every venture Summit has pursued over the past few years has been based, to some extent, in science. The school is already moving forward with the next step as it begins building a new entrepreneurship science building, the SEED Center (Science, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Design).
While Summit School students still visit entrepreneurs through field trips, that inspiration from Wake Forest University’s Innovation Quarter has come full circle. The Idea Shop serves as a sort of in-house start-up lab for the Summit School. Students visit with alumni parent Dr. Dan Cohen, executive director of WFU’s Center for Entrepreneurship, in a “Shark Tank”-style pitch program, which encourages students to take the experience seriously. The hope is to encourage students to continue to dig deeper and explore further to find “nuggets” of inspiration.
What’s Possible? Introducing an Innovation Program
Feeling inspired and wondering how to implement innovation and entrepreneurship within your school’s curriculum? Summit School Idea Shop co-leads Jeff Turner and Chris Culp share their takeaways for consideration.
The What and Why of Dashboards
