UK Challenges High School Students With E-Discovery

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 16, 2015) — Fourteen teachers met at Natural Bridge State Resort Park recently, taking training to incorporate an innovative new program into their high school classrooms. Based in the University of Kentucky Community and Leadership Department, part of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, E-Discovery Challenges You! pushes students to create their own service or product and sell it for profit, teaching valuable entrepreneurial and real-world business skills.

The 14 teachers hail from 10 Appalachian counties and share a common goal: to further the education of their students beyond traditional classroom learning. The pilot program commences spring semester 2015.

Counties involved in the pilot program include Bell, Estill, Jackson, Knox, Lawrence, Morgan, Owsley, Powell, Rockcastle and Whitley. The teachers instruct on a variety of subjects, from math to agriculture.

Following the end of the spring 2015 semester, the 14 teachers involved with the pilot program will reconvene to determine ways to strengthen the program before the E-Discovery team trains an additional 50 high school teachers. These 50 teachers are employed in counties the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has designated "most distressed," and will be trained late summer or early fall 2015.

Three economic indicators are used by the ARC to determine "most distressed" counties: unemployment over a three-year period, per capita market income, and poverty rates. As of 2015 there are 37 counties in Kentucky that qualify for this status.

In 2008, Annette Walters and Melony Denham developed the E-Discovery program in Ann DeSpain's sixth grade classroom, boosting students' self-esteem, improving their social skills, heightening their creativity and teaching real-world money skills.

"We have a dynamic group of teachers piloting the E-Discovery Challenges You! curriculum this semester in high schools. We are expecting students to develop some creative and innovative business ideas that provide income for them and also have the potential to provide an economic boost for their communities," said E-Discovery program manager Melony Denham.

Walters and Denham are both graduates of the Kentucky Entrepreneurial Coaches Institute (KECI) under the auspices of UK, which seeks to fuel entrepreneurship in tobacco-dependent counties in response to lower tobacco incomes.

"It is estimated that about 25 percent of rural adults in the Appalachian region have a business of some kind. We want to build on that entrepreneurial spirit to take it to new levels. Our youth are pivotal for helping the rest of us see new possibilities in Appalachian Kentucky," said Ron Hustedde, director of KECI and professor in UK's Department of Community and Leadership Development.

More than 200 elementary and middle school teachers have been trained to teach the current E-Discovery curriculum with over 50 schools and more than 5,000 students having been involved in the initiative thanks to funding from ARC. ARC currently funds more than 400 projects each year across the 13-state Appalachian region.

"When Gov. Beshear and Congressman Rogers launched the Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) initiative last year, this is exactly the type of success they envisioned — existing organizations taking a leading role in implementing a program to meet one of the needs identified in the final report as submitted to the SOAR Executive Board in September of 2014," said Jared Arnett, executive director of SOAR. "We strongly believe building a strong culture of entrepreneurship starts with engaging our youth into the process, and the E-Discovery Challenges You! program does just that." 

Spanning all levels of primary and secondary education, the E-Discovery program seeks to spark entrepreneurship in young people across Appalachia.

For more information about E-Discovery contact Melony Denham at melony.denham@uky.edu.

MEDIA CONTACT: Clark Bellar, clark.bellar@uky.edu, 859-257-8716