What if you could design one year of a students four-year undergraduate degree program to help them gain the skills to launch a business, collaborate well in teams, and experience the lessons of learning through failure? That’s essentially what has happened in a program called Sandbox at Brigham Young University led by Chris Crittenden who joined us recently on Schools of the Future.
Chris Crittenden founded an artificial intelligence company, which was acquired by Walmart in 2014. He worked as head of product for Walmart’s online grocery and subsequently joined Reef Capital Partners. Chris currently serves as the Managing Director of the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at Brigham Young University, where he leads Sandbox. Sandbox is a two-semester long, all-in entrepreneurship program for undergraduates. We discuss how Sandbox is set up, whether it’s scalable, and how it has evolved in the three years since its initial pilot. Chris explains how Sandbox helps students gain both hard and soft skills and brings learning “deeper into their bones.”
About Sandbox
Program site: https://creators.byu.edu/sandbox
BYU Magazine piece on Sandbox: https://magazine.byu.edu/article/design-thinking/
About Chris Crittenden
Brigham Young University faculty/staff page: https://marriott.byu.edu/directory/details?id=36931
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-crittenden/
Chris Crittenden: Making entrepreneurship education real