HANCOCK – The Copper Country Intermediate School District (CCISD), together with Breakwater Federal Credit Union and Michigan Small Business Development Center, will co-host the first-ever Pike Tank Entrepreneurship Event, a hands-on learning experience designed to challenge students to think like business owners and innovators. Sixty students from Baraga, Keweenaw, and Houghton counties will participate in the all-day event scheduled for March 3, at the Hancock Community Hub.

“It’s been a collaboration so we’ve been working on it together,” said Kayleigh White, Breakwater marketing & community relations coordinator. “It was kind of cool, too, because the students actually worked on some of the press releases.”

To further strengthen the learning experience, White said, students were assigned class projects that contributed directly to key elements of event development and promotion. One such assignment involved designing the official event logo, allowing students to explore the creative and technical aspects of marketing and brand development.

White said Pike Tank is based on the early 2000s TV show Shark Tank. The show featured entrepreneurs who “pitched” business presentations on their company or product to a panel of investors, called sharks. The sharks often found weaknesses and faults in an entrepreneur’s product, business model or valuation of their company.

“We’re going to be putting on an entrepreneurship simulation, and the students will be doing a pitch competition,” White said. “The CTE students are going to be pitching their business ideas on stage in front of a panel of judges.”

David Sim, CCISD public engagement specialist, said students will create a fictional prototype of a product out of recycled materials that would fill a need.

Sim said throughout the day, students will split into groups and engage with different business-related concepts, such as simulating a business and a scavenger hunt, hosted by Breakwater Federal Credit Union. Two keynote speakers, Marty Fittante, CEO of Invest UP and Jim Baker, senior associate vice president for Research and

Development at Michigan Technological University, will speak to the students regarding operating businesses and the experience of owning one.

CTE Business Teacher Steve Kass said Pike Tank provides students an opportunity to put what they have learned in class into practice.

“Experiences like this,” said Kass, “help students build confidence, think creatively, and better understand how their ideas can develop into something meaningful.”