A new era of 'edupreneurship' begins for aspiring educators and future teachers
Electrada CEO Kevin Kushman embraces 'one of the last frontiers of innovation' as the 2025 Joyce Barnes Farmer Distinguished Guest Professor
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Published
Electrada CEO Kevin Kushman is the 2025 Joyce Barnes Farmer Distinguished Guest Professor
A new era of 'edupreneurship' begins for aspiring educators and future teachers
•
Published
When two worlds finally come together, it’s easy to wonder why they were ever apart for so long.
Consider the concept of “edupreneurship,” which employs business principles to help educators create and embrace the innovative solutions needed to improve teaching and learning.
“How do we instill a vision of edupreneurship so educators can build a career understanding the places for opportunity, development, and innovation?” said Electrada CEO Kevin Kushman ’91. “Even if it seems outside the standard approach to becoming a teacher, entrepreneurship shouldn't just reside in the business school. It needs the practices, systems, and strategies that can be applied to any problem-solving approach, and we should bring that to Miami students.”
This is precisely what Kushman does bring to Miami’s College of Education, Health and Society (EHS) as the 2025 recipient of the Joyce Barnes Farmer Distinguished Guest Professorship.
"The connection between education and business presents a valuable opportunity, and Kevin's experience on both sides will help lead us forward," said EHS Dean Amity Noltemeyer. "He will bring real-world perspectives to the academics, help us build connections, and identify the experiences we can offer students to help them develop these skills. His expertise will also encourage us to think more innovatively about addressing the challenges now facing education."
Kushman is also working with the award-winning TEACh Cincinnati program, which strives to combat the teacher shortage, while also diversifying the profession through an innovative “grow-your-own-teacher” pipeline model.
“TEACh is such a cool program, and it should be a model across the state,” Kushman said. “There’s a fantastic circular economy approach because you have a program with a huge wrap around. These students come from high-needs schools, who then become teachers, who turn around and go back to impact the schools and the communities they came from. There's a lot to be done to reinforce this, and I love things that can sprout and be replicated as a model.”
To help do so, Kushman will call upon over 20 years of experience in both the start-up and private enterprise sectors.
After graduating from Miami with a degree in Economics, he worked in financial analysis at several large companies before pivoting to Cinergy, where he helped launch a corporate venture group, which brought a tech-based startup model to the energy industry. From there, his professional success expanded across the startup space to include entrepreneurial efforts in software, alternative fuels, and electric vehicles.
As the current CEO of Electrada, Kushman now helps lead new innovations in the rapidly evolving cleantech and renewable energy industries.
But his coinciding interest in education had already begun years earlier while volunteering at Oyler School in Cincinnati.
Consider the concept of “edupreneurship,” which employs business principles to help educators create and embrace the innovative solutions needed to improve teaching and learning.
“How do we instill a vision of edupreneurship so educators can build a career understanding the places for opportunity, development, and innovation?” said Electrada CEO Kevin Kushman ’91. “Even if it seems outside the standard approach to becoming a teacher, entrepreneurship shouldn't just reside in the business school. It needs the practices, systems, and strategies that can be applied to any problem-solving approach, and we should bring that to Miami students.”
This is precisely what Kushman does bring to Miami’s College of Education, Health and Society (EHS) as the 2025 recipient of the Joyce Barnes Farmer Distinguished Guest Professorship.
"The connection between education and business presents a valuable opportunity, and Kevin's experience on both sides will help lead us forward," said EHS Dean Amity Noltemeyer. "He will bring real-world perspectives to the academics, help us build connections, and identify the experiences we can offer students to help them develop these skills. His expertise will also encourage us to think more innovatively about addressing the challenges now facing education."
Kushman is also working with the award-winning TEACh Cincinnati program, which strives to combat the teacher shortage, while also diversifying the profession through an innovative “grow-your-own-teacher” pipeline model.
“TEACh is such a cool program, and it should be a model across the state,” Kushman said. “There’s a fantastic circular economy approach because you have a program with a huge wrap around. These students come from high-needs schools, who then become teachers, who turn around and go back to impact the schools and the communities they came from. There's a lot to be done to reinforce this, and I love things that can sprout and be replicated as a model.”
To help do so, Kushman will call upon over 20 years of experience in both the start-up and private enterprise sectors.
After graduating from Miami with a degree in Economics, he worked in financial analysis at several large companies before pivoting to Cinergy, where he helped launch a corporate venture group, which brought a tech-based startup model to the energy industry. From there, his professional success expanded across the startup space to include entrepreneurial efforts in software, alternative fuels, and electric vehicles.
As the current CEO of Electrada, Kushman now helps lead new innovations in the rapidly evolving cleantech and renewable energy industries.
But his coinciding interest in education had already begun years earlier while volunteering at Oyler School in Cincinnati.
Kushman's experience mentoring young readers sparked a deeper commitment to help address the educational gaps that exist in underserved communities.
His knowledge and expertise as an entrepreneur inspired Kushman to create a nonprofit children's bookstore to provide books to students in need. Eventually, that project would become the Queen City Book Bank, which is now among the largest literacy resource enterprises in the region. And along the way, Kushman also found inspiration and encouragement from Miami Entrepreneurship professor Brett Smith and Urban Cohort director Tammy Schwartz, both of whom helped him build stronger connections with the community and Miami.
In his new role as the Joyce Barnes Distinguished Professor, Kushman will approach education, he says, “as one of the last frontiers of innovation,” and he plans to facilitate a burgeoning reciprocity between EHS and the Farmer School of Business.
He is also planning various speaker sessions, entrepreneurship-related panels, and a new edupreneurship scrimmage challenge.
This interactive scrimmage event - co-hosted by EHS, Miami’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and Council on Social Entrepreneurship - will bring together students, school district leaders, and entrepreneurs to explore innovative solutions for the teacher recruitment and retention challenge.
All of these activities are part of a larger strategy Kushman hopes will imbue future educators with a greater tolerance for risk, which he views as essential for anyone aspiring to lead and innovate change in any industry.
“I am excited for Kevin to be in this role because he brings an enormous amount of passion and energy and excitement around applying entrepreneurship to education,” Noltemeyer said. “He's going to really help us to build something that not only provides some immediate experiences for our students in the next year, but also something that we can continue to build and improve upon in the future.”
Established in 1809, Miami University is located in Oxford, Ohio, with regional campuses in Hamilton and Middletown, a learning center in West Chester, and a European study center in Luxembourg. Interested in learning more about the College of Education, Health and Society, the Farmer School of Business, or TEACh Cincinnati? Visit their website for more information.
