For Sara Christensen, Global Entrepreneurship Week was a chance to teach her students at Arizona State University the value of networking.

“Making those connections with other students and entrepreneurs and utilizing the resources available by meeting other people (is so valuable),” Christensen said.

Despite the importance of networking for both career development, Christensen said it’s something few students know how to do. So, she hosted StartupDrinks and StartupCoffee during GEW, bringing in close to 75 students – both of which were so successful that they have continued on well after the Week.

Entrepreneurship at ASU is disparate, with each department and school holding their own events and implementing their own programs. This strategy is great for reaching a variety of students, but it also leads to small groups forming and rarely interacting. With GEW that changed, with close to 200 students from across campus attending events and meeting new faces.

These students were also pitted against one another for some friendly competitions, with a new challenge presented through Twitter each day. The most popular of these was a T-shirt competition that asked students to create a slogan for an official ASU/GEW shirt.

While the challenges were strictly entrepreneurial in nature they served to engage the student body and make them aware of entrepreneurship and the related events taking place during the Week.

tags: Arizona State University