A pair of Elizabethtown students were recently announced as finalists in the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge, a business plan competition as a part of e-Fest 2020. Celia Martone and Thomas Kulikowski, two Etown students minoring in Family Business and Entrepreneurship, formed team ‘BeyondVR’ and entered the competition with a venture focused on supporting the use of virtual reality (VR) technologies in science and history education.
“My goal with this project was to someday have a child be excited to go to school because of me,” Martone, a sophomore Education major said.
The team created a website featuring lesson plans that pair with Google Expeditions, a virtual reality platform that allows students to go on virtual field trips.
“I hope that teachers will be able to utilize these resources with little preparation and low cost and to instill the confidence in them that they can push VR technology out to their students and into their classrooms,” Martone said.
Submissions came in from 65 colleges and universities across North America and team BeyondVR was named among 25 finalists. Projects were judged for their video submissions which Kulikowski, a senior Communications major directed, as well as supporting “pitch” decks.
Due to restrictions imposed by COVID-19, the finals for the competition were canceled. Therefore, the Top 25 Finalists will receive an award of $3,000 as well as each finalist college or university will receive a grant of $1,000 thanks to a donation by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation.
Learn more about the Schulze Scholarship Challenge and Team BeyondVR’s project.