HEBRON – Hebron Academy has been awarded a grant to host a week-long residential summer program designed to develop entrepreneurial skills in high school students who have completed their junior year and who demonstrate creativity, academic effort and the drive to excel in entrepreneurship.

The new program, the EntrePrep Summer Institute, will accept applications for 24 places in what planners hope will become the model for similar programs across the country.

Developed by the National Council on Economic Education and funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the program will also include a local component.

Hebron Academy has a entrepreneurship program that features a lecture series by alumni and parents who have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs, and the school has a tradition of college preparatory education.

The summer program will focus on a broad definition of entrepreneurship: the transformation of an idea into an enterprise that creates value.

EntrePrep students will live in supervised residence halls on the Hebron campus and have access to the school’s dining hall, classrooms, library, computer center and fitness center.

In addition, plans are under way to partner with the Kieve/Wavus camps on Damariscotta Lake for leadership training.

The classroom portion of the program will run from July 15 to 20 and present a curriculum, including topics such as opportunity recognition, market research, sales and marketing, accounting and finance, negotiation skills, legal issues of small businesses, business plan development, and teamwork and leadership training. Classes will include presentations, case studies, hands-on activities and projects.

After attending the classroom portion, participants will engage in a team project by setting up a “Business-for-a-Day.” Actually opening and running a business-for-a-day will open participants’ minds to the reality of what it takes to be in business, think as an entrepreneur and work in a team environment to accomplish goals set out by the group.

The key to success will be their choice of business, coming from analysis of the market and effective brainstorming with their partners to determine an idea that will innovatively satisfy a need in the marketplace.

The conclusion of the institute will bring the participants back together to make a formal presentation on their “Business-for-a Day” so they can articulate what they learned from conceptual classroom teaching in the context of running a real business for a day.

Additional information on the session will be forthcoming on the Hebron Academy Web site at http://www.hebronacademy.org and at http://www.entreprep.org.