It is an honor and joy to welcome Lindi Roelofse to the podcast! Lindi is the T. Wayne Davis Chair of Entrepreneurship at the University of Northern Iowa John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center. She has taught all of the classes in the Entrepreneurship minor, which address topics such as finance, general entrepreneurship, and growth strategies. Part of Lindi’s role includes supporting student entrepreneurs - and currently there are 10 UNI students engaging in purposefully growing their own businesses through the RJ McElroy Incubator.
Lindi is also on the core steering team for the Black Business Entrepreneurship Accelerator, which started in September 2020 and to date has graduated 30 students - 100% of the students have increased their sales since graduating, and 25% have been growing double or triple digits.
In this episode, Lindi provides rich examples of how she pushes students to take risks, become more confident, and ultimately see what is possible. She describes her experiential teaching approach that propels her students to be change agents. By throwing her students “into the deep end of the pool and seeing if they can swim” - with lifeguards and pool noodles in place - Lindi helps her students become more comfortable with the unknown and understand that they have the power to collectively solve wicked problems that exist in the world. Throughout the podcast Lindi offers teaching ideas such as her “Night at the Library Challenge” where students work in teams at Rod Library to create a podcast, engage in the Makerspace, develop a call to action using the green screen, expand their information literacy, and do customer discovery for clients - all without any preparation or even knowing the tasks that will be presented prior to the event.
In closing the podcast, Lindi outlines Otto Scharmer’s theoretical framework for how we are moving from Education 1.0 through to Education 4.0. She invites us to consider how in the context of Education 4.0 we might serve as a midwife, who coaches our students through the birthing process to create something new that hasn’t previously existed and to make a positive difference in the world.
A note of gratitude: Lindi and Sarah wanted to give a huge shout out of gratitude to Anton Reiter, Learning Spaces Specialist at UNI, and Darnell Eveleth who both helped produce this podcast and who have helped Lindi’s students create numerous podcasts! We couldn’t make this happen with you! Thank you!
Resources:
Scharmer, O. (2019, April 15). Vertical literacy: Reimagining the 21st century university. Medium.