Virtual Enterprise Class Redefining Business Education

The wheels of commerce were turning at Eastchester High School on Friday, as students in Lauren Stipo’s Virtual Enterprise class huddled around their laptops in the digital lab, perfecting their sales pitches as they did their best to entice business students from other schools around the nation to take a chance on their product.

“Snacks for Smiles” might not be an actual corporation in the strictest sense, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from the way that the students have flung themselves headfirst into their business pursuits. In fact, the company—and the snack boxes they are selling—are part of an immersive economic simulation program set up by Virtual Enterprises, an educational company that gives high school students a chance to run their own virtual business and gain experience across a number of fields, including marketing, sales, design, human resources, IT, management, accounting, and finance, by completing tasks that are integral to the running of any successful enterprise. 

“We have a lot of students who are interested in running their own businesses someday,” said Stipo. “From the very first day, we have kept this is “real world” as we can in order to immerse them.”

The Business Department launched Virtual Enterprise as a course this past fall and quickly set out to structure the company, complete with a full C-Suite of executives who had to interview with both Stipo and EHS Principal Chris Welsh for their positions. 

After dazzling Welsh and Stipo during the interview process, senior Elena Ferrara was chosen as the CEO of Snacks for Smiles. She said that this unique experience provides a bird’s-eye view of the way executives operate within a company, giving her more of an appreciation for everything that goes on in a business behind the scenes.

“A big part of a CEO’s job is delegating tasks and making sure that employees understand what they’re doing,” she said. “I run a good amount of the class meetings, leading discussions and making sure everyone feels heard in the classroom.”

11th grader Alexander Piergiovanni, the company’s Vice President of Accounting, said that he’s been thrilled with the open-ended and collaborative nature of this class, noting that each day brings new opportunities to problem-solve through discussion and compromise.

“I saw this as an opportunity to improve my teamwork skills and work with my classmates to take part in this new experience and make the most of it,” said Piergiovanni. “And because this is a new class, there’s obviously some adjustments; we’re learning on the job and working through problems together.”

That idea of trial-and-error has been key, concurred VP of Human Resources, 11th grader Daniella Gazel, who noted that she and her classmates are acquiring new skills each day.

“We’re constantly learning new things, it doesn’t matter what department you are working in,” said Gazel. “For example, the accounting team is using Quickbooks, and that’s something that we’ve never really touched before. Because this is new to all of us, we’re facing new problems each day, and we have to solve those problems, which is a great experience for us.”

Chris Welsh said that although this Virtual Enterprise may eschew some of the more traditional structures that can be found in other subject areas, the hands-on, student-led approach is providing students with invaluable real-world experience.

“The world that our students will be going into after graduation is going to be very different from what they’re used to, so emphasizing transferable, authentic, skills is a priority across subject areas, not just the business courses, “ said Welsh. “The idea of cognitive flexibility, the ability to consider multiple perspectives, this course certainly teaches them that.”

Ferrara concurred, adding that Virtual Enterprise is a course that any student interested in gaining a deeper understanding about how companies operate in today’s marketplace should look to take during their time at EHS.

“This has been a great experience; this gives you the opportunity to interact with people who understand the aspects behind running a business,” she said. “It’s amazing to work with so many other students interested in business, and I don’t think we realized how many of us there were until we started doing our first virtual trade shows.”