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Begun in 2006, the program is designed to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit among high school students, encourage their creativity and help with the students’ college expenses.
Kelsey, a Soddy-Daisy High graduate, will use her $3,500 scholarship toward studies at East Tennessee State University. Eighteen-year-old Brian, who graduated this spring from Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, plans to apply his $2,500 scholarship to his tuition at Lee University. Emily, a GPS junior, now has a $1,500 scholarship for her undergraduate education.
Kelsey said her business inspiration, Clothes in Code, is a shop where students whose clothing must conform to dress code could find fashionable, yet reasonably priced outfits.
The 18-year-old, who has participated in state and regional DECA Club competitions, said her marketing teacher and DECA Club advisor Karen Mitchell helped her with the project.
The daughter of Sharon and Dale Bailey, Kelsey plans a career as a high school English teacher. “My senior English teacher, David Sneed, influenced my decision,” she said. “He cares about his students and his expectations are high.”
Brian’s business is Choo-Choo Charlie’s, a sit-down restaurant playing off Chattanooga’s railroad heritage. “It would cater to tourists who would be served by model trains which deliver their orders,” Brian said. “We would have to make the train cars large enough to hold the food, and we’d need a director of traffic.”
A straight-A student, Brian felt comfortable communicating his business plan to the judges, including Littlefield, during the finalists’ presentation and was savvy enough to note that in his 2008 State of the City address the mayor endorsed a revival of the passenger train in Chattanooga.
Brian’s more likely to become a math instructor than a restaurateur – which makes perfect sense for the oldest son of Jill and Steve Ball, both of whom are in public education.
Emily’s enterprise, Intron Research Cooperation (IRC), is a research facility specializing in non-coding regions of the DNA—or introns—which have been classified as “junk” or purposeless since their discovery in 1977.
“But it’s possible that introns influence genetic traits,” said the 16-year-old daughter of Tammy Cooper. “The study of this area in the DNA might provide causes and cures to genetic diseases previously mysterious to the scientific world.”
Emily credits GPS teachers Jenise Gordon and Linda Dizer with guidance and support as she developed her “business.” She said Littlefield was especially interested in her plan to partner the IRC with the UTC SimCenter and her hope that jobs at the IRC would help keep bright young people – such as this year’s Great Ideas’ top winners—in Chattanooga. |
