Shirley Hayden begins her day at 5:30 a.m., getting her 12-year-old son ready for school before rushing off to her full-time job at an over-the-counter pharmaceutical manufacturer. But when 4 p.m. rolls around, she doesn’t go home – she’s off to school.
Hayden, 39, is one of about 20 students in the fledgling Hillman Entrepreneurs program, which targets non-traditional, first-generation college students with financial need. The students began at Prince George’s Community College, where their tuition was fully paid for, then came to the university on a partial scholarship to complete their education and finally work toward starting their own businesses.
The students in the program are from diverse backgrounds and age groups, with many holding down full-time jobs or supporting families, said Karen Thornton, the program’s director.
“The students are just trying to claw their way through, working on a million things and trying really hard to get that degree,” Thornton said. “They’re just stellar, stellar students.”
Hayden said she hopes the Hillman program and her degree will help with the small company she has already started, Vision Quest IJN. The company provides support for inventors and promotes a product she invented called The Unique Seat, a portable seat cushion with a collapsible back.
The program was created as a partnership between the university and PGCC in the fall of 2006 and is still in the pilot stage. David Hillman, CEO of Southern Management Corporation, donated $1.7 million to start the program.
The students started at the university last semester and are all in their junior years.
Wade Cassamajor, who at 21 is a more “traditional” student, started out of high school as a real estate agent. But he quickly realized that the life of a salesman was not for him and applied for the Hillman program.
Cassamajor is still interested in real estate and is thinking about starting up a commercial real estate company that he can manage instead of working there as a salesman.
But being in the program, he says, has given him options. He recently got a job offer at the Internal Revenue Service to work as a special agent and will work there this semester as an intern. He also got a call from a Wall Street financial firm to do a summer internship.
“I didn’t think I had a shot, especially coming from community college,” he said.
This semester, the group plans on breaking into two teams and starting two different businesses. One will focus on bringing the liquid desiccant waterfall from the Solar Decathalon’s LEAFHouse to market. The unique cooling system was invented by university students for last semester’s international competition to build the most energy-efficient house. It works by pulling in warm air and mixing it with calcium chloride, which allows the moisture in the air to cascade down as a waterfall. The resulting air is cooler because it is drier.
The other team will try to create a day-care center that caters to the infants and young children of faculty and students. Many professional women are choosing not to have children because they don’t have guaranteed child care for their infants, Thornton said, so this would allow women to have more flexibility in choosing whether to have children.
After Shavon Holland had her son during her senior year of high school, she went to PGCC for a few semesters, but found it impossible to care for a child, work and go to school. Now, at 31, she has already gotten her associate’s degree from PGCC and is working toward her degree at this university while interning at the Department of Education.
Holland said the program is helpful not just because of the scholarship, but also because of the support from other members of the group who have similar circumstances.
“Not to say that it’s not hard on regular students, but when you have kids or a spouse it’s hard to balance,” she said. “But it’s worth it though because we know it’s such a great opportunity.”
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