What will it take to make social entrepreneurship a field that Georgetown students dive into just as eagerly as they do consulting and investment banking?
At the Oct. 25 panel, “Community Service as an Undergraduate and Beyond,” moderator Paige Lovejoy (SFS ’12) used a new phrase inspired by panelist and Vice President of Education at Compass Partners Nabil Hashmi’s (SFS ’11) comment related to the creative culture at Google.
“What can we do to build a Georgetown DNA — or does Georgetown DNA already exist?” Lovejoy asked.
Georgetown students have an innate desire to make an impact. According to Nick Sementelli (SFS ‘09), communications associate at Faith in Public Life, our university attracts go-getters and self-starters who want to make tangible impacts on the world. Besides having academic accolades, most of us also have experience being leaders as captains and presidents in high school, and some even have founded their own companies and organizations. We “big fish” splashed into a large pond of impressive leaders by choosing Georgetown.
We have a tremendous opportunity in our short four years here to engage with our peers, who are incredibly smart and driven people. The Georgetown DNA contains a love of learning, a relentless need to succeed and a need to give back. To capitalize on this potential knowledge sharing and leadership exchange, Georgetown should encourage student partnership and innovation from the moment students step through the front gates onto this campus of unprecedented opportunity.
Changing the Georgetown culture so that more students readily adopt the values of being men and women for others means stepping up rhetoric on the university level to encourage real action. I cannot agree more with Hashmi’s point of the evening: Though the university talks about cura personalis, it could do more to develop the mind, body and soul of its students to more actively promote holistic development.
Throughout the panel, Sementelli brainstormed several ideas that could better foster student innovation at Georgetown, including subsidizing unpaid internships providing group housing support and general grants to fund everything from competitive alternative spring break trips to start-up social ventures.
These broad outlines could be realized by adopting the Social Innovation and Public Service mission of creating more opportunities for Georgetown students to perform public service. A fund that would invest $1.25 million in student ideas and initiatives that support public service and social entrepreneurship, SIPS could streamline support to students with desire to impact the world. For the SIPS fund to come to fruition, the student body must demonstrate its support in the referendum this December.
We’ve witnessed Georgetown graduates do great things already: Jessica Rimington (SFS ’09) created One World Youth Project, an organization bringing college students to public middle and high schools to encourage cross-cultural, global and community awareness. David Lee (COL ’11) founded the Stinky Peace nonprofit, which converts organic waste into useable cooking and heating fuel globally. Similarly, Neil Shah’s (MSB ’10) and Arthur Woods’ (MSB ’10) Compass Partners project offers support to student fellows with innovative ideas who want to change the world through business.
Clearly, it’s natural for Georgetown students to actively advance values of service in business and nonprofit sectors. As a university, our community has the capacity to achieve the ultimate goal of developing solutions that work and lead to real social impact.
While Georgetown is sure to turn out more entrepreneurs, the proposed SIPS fund could help ingrain the Georgetown DNA into each of its students eager to leave impressions within and beyond the front gates. If SIPS materializes, we can bring together ambitious students with true Georgetown DNA, and provide them with the support necessary to achieve their goals.
Deven Comen is a senior in the College.
