School of Management dean Gerhard Apfelthaler helped to create Start Up Kids.
Family Stays Close, on Land Two of the siblings swim in separate events, and one’s a diver. All are staying for the academics.
BRIAN STETHEM ’84
Start Up Kids is a collaboration of local organizations that is funded in part by a grant from Cal Lutheran’s Community Leaders Association. Apfelthaler and professor Vlad Vaiman of the School of Management are among the lead instructors. Young students come with teacher recommendations or from a gifted and talented group. The program includes guest presentations by established entrepreneurs and a field trip to Cal Lutheran’s New Venture Competition. For the first time this year, Cal Lutheran undergraduates have joined as mentors who are paired with lead instructors. “Their coming in to do this contributes so much, and on a topic that the kids don’t get exposure to – that’s not part of the curriculum,” Triplett said. The undergraduates are members of a campus entrepreneurship club or have worked at Cal Lutheran’s Hub 101 business incubator near the freeway in Westlake Village. They all approach life in the way of entrepreneurs. “My dream is to have my own NGO that does education and empowerment” for women and girls in rural areas of South Asia, said Zujaja Tehreem, a junior from Ventura majoring in global studies. Tyler Lucas, a senior business major from Turlock, and Nathaniel Thompson, a senior in economics from Stockton, are partners in a web-based startup called Simple Swap, which “will be a platform that you can go on and trade your sunglasses for a video game or a couch for a chair,” according to Lucas. He’s also starting a microbrewery this summer with his father. The undergraduate instructors believe that Start Up Kids itself has potential for expansion – to middle schools as well as private and charter schools. “I definitely want to be involved with it as much as I can, because I see a big bright future in this. It can change the way fourth- to eighth-graders think,” Lucas said. For Thompson, that means taking kids beyond concepts at school and teaching them to build things. “What else you can learn from school is, ‘OK, I can use creativity and my own ideas and my own types of inspiration to get stuff going right now,’” he said.
Brittany DeValk (left) transferred to Cal Lutheran and Samuelson Aquatics Center from a liberal arts college in Maryland; her Minnesota twin siblings, Brandon and Brianna, came straight from high school.
Older sister Brittany DeValk and her twin siblings, Brandon and Brianna, have at least this academic year together on campus and in the water. The two sisters live together, which is “a little weird,” Brianna says, “but it feels back to normal.” That’s about the most dissention you’ll hear in the ranks of these undergraduates from Elk River, Minnesota. When asked which of them competes in the toughest athletic event, all three point to Brittany, the graduating senior. “Breaststroke is like 90 percent legs,” she explains. Brandon swims a variety of events including butterfly, and Brianna’s a diver who just added the 3-meter event to her 1-meter springboard specialty. The twins, who are freshmen, followed their older sister to Cal Lutheran because of small classes and academics. “Swimming is just something that I had the opportunity to do, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I’ve had lifetime bests already,” said Brandon, who majors in exercise science. Brittany and Brianna are history pedagogy majors preparing for careers as secondary school teachers. Brittany might stay on at Cal Lutheran if she chooses the Graduate School of Education for her teaching credential and master’s degree. “My career goal is to be teaching abroad for five to 10 years, if not longer, and then come back to the United States and share all of my knowledge and experience,” she said. The three are not the first in their family at Cal Lutheran, a distinction that belongs to a cousin, Jeremy Swenson ’11. APRIL 2017
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