COMPRESSING Time: ACCELERATING STUDENT PREPAREDNESS THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND LIFE SKILLS.

PositionEXTRAORDINARY EDUCATION

Emily De Lena was a student when she stood in front of Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph, who is now HPU's Entrepreneur in Residence. She had a clicker in her hand, a monitor behind her and a belief in the business she was building.

But what was the next step?

High Point University had helped her secure start-up funding through the annual Elevator Pitch and Business Plan Competitions. She met a local angel investor on campus who wanted to partner. Faculty and area business owners had mentored her, too.

Now Randolph, a Silicon Valley veteran, was inside Cottrell Hall's Belk Entrepreneurship Center giving feedback to students like her.

"You need a prototype," Randolph told De Lena after listening to her pitch.

And it struck her. She'd been wondering if Track Rabbit, her device that empowers runners to build speed through an LED light system, was ready for the prototype phase.

Now she knew. So she began building the prototype and eventually preparing the product for market.

De Lena graduated from HPU in May 2016 and went on to run her company full-time. A year later, she was installing her product inside the recreation area at HPU's Slane Student Center. At the same time, a CNBC reporter was planning a trip to interview her about the business in light of the 2017 World Track and Field Championship.

"It's full circle,"said De Lena, who's from Pennsylvania and has built her company in Charlotte, North Carolina.

For De Lena and thousands more alumni, the HPU journey compressed time for them. They earned in four short years the type of wisdom and experience it would typically take decades to achieve.

Like face-to-face opportunities with the co-founder of Netflix.

"The first time I toured the HPU campus, I knew something great was going to happen if I became a student here," De Lena says. "I knew it would change my life--and it did. It was fate."

Her story is unique, but the methodical mentorship she experienced at HPU is the standard.

Like Ashlee Branch, featured on page 107, who landed a position hundreds competed for thanks to critical thinking skills she earned through her undergraduate research experiences.

Or Caroline Tucker, page 7, who was recruited by online shopping giant Amazon through her Linkedln profile, which she built with guidance from her career advisor.

Katherine Dunleavy, page 44, studied abroad in Europe, which made her an attractive candidate for a public relations internship back in the states.

And Nick Stigler, who was just a...

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