Students in the NDSU College of Business are involved in groundbreaking work to help the next generation of entrepreneurs recognize and hone their strengths.

On April 25, four finance majors taking the college’s Legacy leadership course hosted 60 high school students from the across the state who are members of the Choice Financial Junior Bank Board. As part of that activity, the Legacy students administered Gallup’s new “Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder” assessment tool, often referred to as ESF.

NDSU is the first business school in the country to use ESF, which was released in January by Gallup, a global strategic consulting company renowned for its public opinion polls.

The Legacy course is an intensive education program designed to strengthen business students’ leadership abilities. In Legacy, students are encouraged to explore, discover, ponder and challenge. The ESF project, organized by students Grant Johnson, Sean Kolodziej, Matthew Kile and Isaac Svebakken, fit perfectly with the aims of the course.

“I knew the NDSU College of Business had to be on the leading edge of this, because it is our calling to turn people’s potential into performance so they can fuel the economic engine of this state and country,” associate dean Tim Peterson said about pitching the idea of introducing ESF to high school students. Choice Financial agreed and funded the project.

“It’s really important for high school students to see they have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs,” explained Kristina Holtgard, Choice Financial customer service representative. “They are the future of the business community, so it’s important for them to get a jump on finding and building their strengths.”

For the NDSU students, it was a chance to learn by doing and share their interest in business with younger students.

Kile, a sophomore from Golden Valley, Minnesota, said, “It’s exciting to be one of the pioneers using ESF. It’s cool to bring cutting-edge assessment to high school students from around North Dakota.”

According to Todd Johnson, channel leader for entrepreneurship and job creation for Gallup in Omaha, Nebraska, the 30-minute online evaluation measures 10 distinctive talents possessed by successful entrepreneurs. Among the talent categories are Business Focus, Confidence, Creative Thinker, Determination, Knowledge Seeker and Risk Taker.

“There are recurring patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that equip top performers to excel,” Todd Johnson explained. “ESF creates a language to talk about how people can naturally be better business builders by identifying and developing their entrepreneurial talents. It helps them start the right conversations with mentors, investors and coaches.”

The organizers of the NDSU project saw immediate results first hand.

“Once they took the test, you could see the light bulbs going on for some of them,” said Svebakken, a junior from Hopkins, Minnesota. “Certain students realized their potential right away. You could tell they were already thinking of how to better themselves to be entrepreneurs.”

Grant Johnson, a sophomore from Bemidji, Minnesota, said, “I think knowing your strengths really broadens your horizons. If you want to be an entrepreneur, the assessment helps grow that seed of thought or it can plant one.”

This is an important time to encourage young people to plan for and explore business opportunities. For the first time in 35 years, more American businesses are failing than are being created, according to Gallup. The United States now ranks 12th among developed nations in start-up business activity.

At the same time, polls indicate 77 percent of American students in grades 5-12 want to be their own boss and 42 percent plan to start their own business.

So, it’s critical to identify talents and potential at an early age to help guide students down a path to a successful business career.

Kolodziej, a senior from Hastings, Minnesota, said assessments like ESF can help students along that journey. “It’s cool for high school students to go into college with an entrepreneurial mindset,” he said. “I think it’s especially important giving them this assessment in Fargo, a community where entrepreneurship is really thriving.”

In addition to the ESF assessment, the Legacy students demonstrated the educational opportunities at NDSU’s Commodity Trading Room and took the high school students to the induction ceremony for Beta Gamma Sigma honor society.

NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.