PEORIA – Bradley University mechanical engineering student Jonathan Sauder of Roanoke was selected recently as one of 56 college students worldwide to participate in Stanford University’s Roundtable on Entrepreneurship Education (REE) Fellows Program.
The program, which spanned three months and culminated in mid-October with a one-week “immersive” trip to Stanford University and Silicon Valley, offered students interested in entrepreneurship an opportunity to work on interdisciplinary and international teams.  Fifty-six students from all majors and undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral candidates were selected. Participants in the program are motivated students, who have demonstrated academic excellence, leadership skills, and enthusiasm.
Sauder, who worked with three other international team members, said the opportunity gave him a chance to practice what he had been learning in his mechanical engineering classes. His team included a global entrepreneurship MBA student from Thailand; a biomedical engineering doctoral student from Ireland; and a biotechnology entrepreneurship graduate student, who is a native of India and is pursuing studies in the United States.
The team collaborated with each other via the Internet for the three months on a project focusing on a service-oriented business for local produce farmers.
All of Sauder’s team members spoke English, but differing time zones of the students posed the biggest problem for members to chat online. They settled on 8 a.m. for Sauder, which was late evening for another team member.
Besides the obvious benefit of collaborating with students from other countries, Sauder said working with team members representing other disciplines was rewarding as was putting entrepreneurial strategies into practice. In fact, participating in the program made Sauder “realize how important innovation and entrepreneurship are to me.”
The primary purpose of the program, Sauder said, “is to get the brightest students from different backgrounds to collaborate on entrepreneurship.”
The program culminated with the teams converging upon Stanford University in California in October. At Stanford, the teams had one week to develop a business plan for their project, which consisted of creating a Web site where the consumers could order produce online from farmers. The team gave a poster presentation on the last day. CNBC’s “Collaboration Now” recently featured the REE Fellows Program.