UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Penn State Smeal College of Business has partnered with Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) to develop an entrepreneurial collection of books for the young institution’s library.
Established in 2006, BIUST is Botswana’s only international, science and technology university. As a growing institution, BIUST has a strategic focus on driving social and economic development in the nation.
Anne Hoag, the director at the Center for Penn State Student Entrepreneurship in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, was a Fulbright specialist at BIUST during summer 2022. During her time at BIUST, Hoag focused on consulting, advising and teaching entrepreneurship.
Additionally, Hoag assisted in the development of technology transfer policies and practices, which was crucial to the institution’s innovation focus.
“I was helping them understand how it was done at other institutions and talking to them about the different issues that could come up when you’re trying to do technology transfer in the developing world,” Hoag said.
In addition to technology transfer, Hoag worked on entrepreneurship education, and upon browsing the library at BIUST, she noticed a lack of entrepreneurship-related books in the university's collection.
“Here at Penn State and many institutions, we view the libraries, library collections, databases and librarians as key elements of a healthy entrepreneurship ecosystem,” Hoag said. “BIUST had a good collection, but they didn’t have entrepreneurship-related titles — ‘how to teach entrepreneurship,’ ‘how to be an entrepreneur,’ ‘how to start a business’ — that I think are important for developing an entrepreneurial education.”
Hoag then began compiling a list of books that the university could add to its developing library, and eventually turned to Jeanette Miller, associate director of the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Smeal, for further recommendations.
The Farrell Center — which promotes and supports entrepreneurship education and innovation at the college — is a resource that Hoag had become familiar with after co-teaching a course in business modeling and new venture creation with Miller.
“The Farrell Center is very open about working with other colleges, departments, scholars and other disciplines,” Hoag said. “Their outreach to the rest of the University is a nice element of our entrepreneurship ecosystem.”
While Hoag intended to send the list of book recommendations to BIUST, Miller sparked the idea to donate the books to BIUST through a grant from the Farrell Center. After Miller met with Shawn Clark, director of the Farrell Center, the idea became a reality.
“This donation strives to share knowledge and resources, with real-world application, to fellow educators and students on the other side of the world,” Clark said. “In some sense, the world is the community we serve.”
Working together as a team, Hoag, Miller, Clark and other Farrell Center members selected a variety of titles, placed the book orders, prepared shipping, and went through customs procedures.
Before shipping the packages to Botswana, the three met with a representative of BIUST, Donah Lekwati, who is at Penn State on a Humphrey Fellowship.
“He’s here to learn about higher education administration, trends, innovations and best practices that he can then take back to BIUST,” Hoag said.
Hoag explained that one of BIUST’s founding principles is “to be a driver in economic development in Botswana.”
With the resources provided by the Farrell Center, BIUST will be able to learn more about entrepreneurship and build economic development through innovation and industry.
BIUST received the package of books and has added them to its library collection. Miller explained that gratitude is “very deep” from BIUST after the Farrell Center’s donation.
“It was nice that all the pieces came together fluidly,” Miller said. “That little bit that we can provide may have impact in a broader sense, and our Smeal values are we always want to have the greatest impact we can.”