The C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston will welcome 110 outstanding high school seniors to campus this month for a summer camp to help them get a jump start on careers in entrepreneurship. The camps began on July 6 and will end on July 24. The summer enrichment program, “EXPLORE,” offers three weeklong residential camps with different themes that are focused on preparing students to work in sales, entrepreneurship, and sustainability and energy. The program also exposes students to different study areas to help them learn what they might be interested in pursuing as a career.
Each EXPLORE camp will be led by a team at Bauer, with professors designing a challenging experience for the students. The program will kick off with EXPLORE: Entrepreneurship from July 6-10, an entrepreneurship bootcamp run by the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship. Next, Bauer’s Sales Excellence Institute will lead EXPLORE: Sales, a program in which high school students will learn team building, elevator pitch, and presentation skills. Finally, the last week of the camp will be EXPLORE: Energy & Sustainability from July 20-24, a program run by the Global Energy Management Institute that recognizes Houston’s regional strength in the energy industry.
When Bauer launched the EXPLORE camps in 2013, the program recieved a modest number of applications from local residents. Two years later, the college received nearly 500 applications from 14 states and 43 cities across Texas. Joyce Williams, the undergraduate program director, said that the pool of applications was so strong this year that the school decided to admit 110 student this year instead of the usual 90. Full scholarships were available to allow accepted students to attend a camp.