A Decade of Innovation | Issue 2024

BEI Celebrates 10 Years of Transformative Experiential Education
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In April 2024, nearly 150 people gathered in VCHS’ small gym to hear three student teams present their innovative start-up ideas to a panel of investors.

In the crowd were parents, fellow students, faculty, staff, venture capitalists, and passersby. All present were focused on the stage for the event-concluding Q&A, featuring two alumni now in college at UCLA and Claremont McKenna.

The President’s Business Challenge (PBC) is a semester-long project where students develop a product idea, write a business plan, and prepare a professional pitch for investors. After competing against their peers in multiple rounds of judged pitching, these top teams from the Entrepreneurship Honors class earned the chance to pitch to three Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

This past April marked the tenth anniversary of the PBC, the genesis of what is today an expansive K-12 Business, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation (BEI) program. Since 2014, when BEI founder and director Hannah Kim coached the first cohort of fifty students in developing startup pitches, the program has expanded exponentially to serve hundreds of students each academic year–some of whom return to mentor, advise, and share their experiences.

During the 2023-24 academic year alone, 720 students enrolled in BEI elective courses, while 907 students participated in extracurricular BEI programs. Overall, over sixty percent of K-12 students at VCS engage in a BEI course or program each year.

“I’ve been privileged to witness so many Valley Christian students experience the startup process and cultivate their entrepreneurial mindset,” says Hannah Kim. “The tremendous personal and professional growth they experience, developing essential twenty-first-century skills, inspires us to continue pouring into the students.”

Drawing upon the rich resources of Silicon Valley, including a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, leading industry experts, and experienced faculty, BEI now offers fourteen different elective courses, ranging from Creative Design Thinking for elementary students to the junior high Launch-A-Business class and Entrepreneurship Honors for high school students. Eleven distinct programs providing real-world, hands-on learning experiences for students of all ages are available during the school day and after school. In addition to their classroom options, high school students who want more hands-on experience can also participate in Quest Incubator, the competitive Speech & Debate program, or the DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America) program, the largest chapter of its kind in the Bay Area.

Across all grades and all programs, BEI empowers students to assess the needs around them and equips them to develop creative, high-impact solutions that can transform industries and societies.

“BEI taught me how to collaborate with people who are different from me and gain confidence in my public speaking,” reports alumnus Audrey Guo (’23). By the time BEI students graduate, most have presented before business and community leaders and developed detailed business plans.

“My experience through programs like DECA, PBC, and Quest Incubator ultimately led me to my dream major at USC,” adds Guo, who is in the elite university’s highly competitive World Bachelor of Business program.

Alumnus Cale McClellan (’18) was among VCHS’ first Quest Incubator participants. While still in high school, he developed his first patented technology and launched his own business. “The entire BEI team laid the foundation and imparted invaluable insights that fueled my growth as an entrepreneur,” says McClellan, who founded and now serves as the Director of Technology at In-Houz Consulting, a provider of innovative tech solutions to rapidly scaling companies. “The knowledge I took with me has been instrumental in developing In-Houz Consulting into a successful technology firm.”

BEI continues to expand student opportunities for learning, growth, and impact. This past year, the high school introduced Social Innovation, a project-based course emphasizing social impact. Students in the inaugural class partnered with the San Jose Police Department to improve traffic and pedestrian safety. Their final proposals, completed through an intensive design process, were presented to city council members and police department command staff. These proposals have already resulted in new programs and funding to implement their recommendations.

This year’s offerings for Social Innovation will triple the number of students, alongside a new Entrepreneurship Practicum Honors course and ongoing popular courses like Business Fundamentals, Personal Finance, AP Computer Science, and Principles of Engineering Honors.

Even with all that BEI has accomplished in the last decade, Kim sees the potential for much more.

“I hope we can provide more courses and programs for elementary and junior high students soon. I also want to see our high schoolers partnering with national and international organizations to solve big, real-world problems,” she says. “There’s so much more we can do, and I have no doubt our students can rise to the challenge.”
 

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