Meeting the Challenge: - The Council of Independent Colleges

Serving Students Well: Independent Colleges Today
Georgetown
College in
Kentucky has
established
a variety of
partnerships to
raise its profile,
including
serving as
the summer
training camp
for the National
Football League’s
Cincinnati
Bengals.
fall the money in the account is handed over to a new group
of students to manage. The original principal has swelled to
$200,000 and in some years the students have outperformed
Georgetown’s professional money managers.
Perhaps Crouch’s most creative student-centered
initiative is derived from real estate mogul Donald Trump’s
television show, The Apprentice. Crouch divides participating
students into teams of two to four. He presents each team
with a different problem facing the college and asks the team
to solve it. For example, he challenged one group to change
student attitudes about the condition of campus residence
halls and gave that team a $4,000 budget to work with.
Over the summer, the students redecorated the lobbies of six
halls using a different theme for each building. To succeed
in the challenge, the students had to prove that their efforts
had measurably altered student attitudes, which they were
able to do.
Once a team has completed a task, Crouch takes
them to a Trump-style “board room”—it is actually the
executive cabinet room, which Crouch persuaded a company
to redecorate so that it resembles the set on The Apprentice.
Crouch takes a kinder, gentler approach than Trump’s weekly
“You’re fired!” Crouch does not fire anyone, he just turns
thumbs up or down on whether the team has succeeded at
its challenge. Each member of a successful team receives a
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