Business Fellows’ Humble Beginnings
Business Fellows began in 2011 as a humble vision for a program that could support 20 students with mentorship and professional development opportunities over the course of a single academic year.
In conversations with students, Kimberly McGinnis, Business Fellows’ founder and former associate director of student engagement for diversity and inclusion, saw a fervent need for a centralized program to develop community among students.
“I was meeting with quite a few undergraduate students who were disconnected from other students like them,” said McGinnis of the program’s origins. “I saw that the need was there and that they needed a way in which to connect with other students so they could create their own support network.”
I was able to illustrate that by creating community, you also increase retention and graduation. Now, you have greater engagement from alumni because they participated in Business Fellows.
Kimberly McGinnis, founder, Business Fellows
McGinnis built a team of supporters to get the program off the ground, including LaDreka Karikari, who served as senior admissions officer during Business Fellows’ early years and later assistant director of undergraduate admissions; Constance Cooper, the program’s first faculty leader; Jenn Wiswell, director of undergraduate programs; and Marianne Lewis, current dean of Lindner and associate dean of undergraduate programs at the time of Business Fellows’ founding.
Although the college and university offered some initiatives and supports for marginalized students, formalizing a signature program for students allowed for more concentrated efforts to be made to advocate for students throughout their entire college experience.
Beyond community, McGinnis also saw an opportunity to better connect students with resources and opportunities for study abroad, co-ops, internships and more. Early programming worked to mend this divide by offering mentorship with alumni and business professionals and a speaker series that covered time management, interview skills, networking, professional dress and more.
By introducing the opportunities, experiences and sense of community Business Fellows offered, the program began to address another point of concern among undergraduate staff: retention.
“Students were going through their first-year experience disconnected and by sophomore year, they might not be here,” said McGinnis. “Whereas if we could get them connected to other students, help them create study groups, help them understand that that transition from high school to college is a big one and that study habits are different, that was then the impetus for UC creating a specialized first-year experience for this particular group of students.”
In 2013, Business Fellows began to take its current shape, implementing a cohort program to further the sense of community created for students.
“I was able to illustrate that by creating community, you also increase retention and graduation. Now, you have greater engagement from alumni because they participated in Business Fellows.”