Business week sprouts leaders: Fairbanks program gives youth a taste of leadership in the corporate world.

• Author: West, Gail
• Position: EDUCATION

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Are Alaska businesses pondering the problem of knowledge transfer and the aging workforce? Are we wondering how we'll get tomorrow's leaders--or where they'll come from? No need. At a summer camp on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, many of those future business leaders are getting a taste of what's ahead and learning how to meet the challenges they'll face.

Alaska Business Week, a partnership between UAF and the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce, gives high school students the opportunity to find and use their leadership skills as well as earning college credits. For one week each summer, students--with guidance from business advisers drawn from some of the state's leading companies--create their own businesses, learn to deal with shareholders, understand the link between marketing and sales, and navigate the minefields of financing.

"It's a life-changing experience for our students," says Ann Ringstad, UAF's director, Office of Community Advocacy. "It inspires them to step out of their comfort zones, to consider what talents they may have that they don't even know about yet. It makes them consider their futures and all the opportunities open to them."

Ringstad provided the spark that brought the Business Week concept to Alaska from Washington. In 2007, Ringstad says, the Alaska State Chamber board visited the program created by the Association of Washington Business and met a believer in the Washington Business Week program, Steve Hyer.

"The following year, Steve came to Alaska and made a presentation to the Alaska State Chamber board. He said, 'wouldn't it be a great idea if Alaska got involved,'" Ringstad says.

In 2009, Ringstad, at the behest of the Alaska State Chamber, participated in the Washington Business Week program as a company adviser. She says she wanted to "drive it first" before she championed it at UAF. Hyer, the executive director for the Foundation for Private Enterprise Education--the organization created to house Washington Business Week and more advanced spinoffs on the program--said Washington's program started in 1976 at Central Washington University. Within a few years, Hyer says, the program had spread to about 24 other states--17 of those programs are still operating.

Stepping Up

When Ringstad returned to UAF at the end of her stint with Washington Business Week, she was convinced, and during the summer of 2009 Tesoro presented the Alaska State Chamber with a $40,000 check to...