Chapter 12: The Fair Trade Project: Exploring Structures for Civic-Minded Entrepreneurial Learning

Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE, which changed it’s name to Enactus in the Fall of 2012) was a struggling small elective course for undergraduates offered by the Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design Department at Indiana University–Bloomington. Before my involvement in the course, enrollment had ranged from a high class size of seven students to a low of two students, in a department with over 500 majors, where elective class sizes capped at 30 had waitlists.

The course was developed through a departmental initiative to support students’ participation in the activities of SIFE, the national 40-year-old experiential learning organization. Campuses form SIFE chapters to have students engage in the organization’s mission of creating a better world through the positive power of business (Students in Free Enterprise, 2011). Businesses fund SIFE activities to help develop applied student learning and to earn a presence at the exclusive annual regional and national SIFE competitions that attract thousands of top students. Sponsors secure an early opportunity to recruit these talented students at official competition career fairs. The course was formed to attract students to SIFE activities through credit, but also to help students learn to participate in and manage community projects. The course had been unsuccessful in recruiting students for the previous four years and had never won at competition before my arrival in 2005.