Winners Announced at Business Plan Competition

June 4, 2010 - Two Texans have won $25,000 in the Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition, the first-ever exclusively designed to promote innovation to improve education.

Shaun Sims, 23, and Andrew Mills, 28, both of Austin, took first prize for Digital Proctor, their idea to improve security in online education. Penn GSE Dean Andy Porter made the announcement yesterday, after a three-hour presentation by six finalists.

Digital Proctor analyzes student behavior in online classrooms, identifies suspicious activity through keyboard usage and algorithms, detects financial-aid fraud, and helps to increase student-retention rates. It outshined 125 submissions from the U.S., India, Taiwan and South Korea.

Second prize of $15,000 was awarded to Jen Schnidman, 26, of New Orleans for Drop the Chalk, a web-based software that allows educators to track and quantify students’ academic growth by providing an overall picture of what students already know and what they still need to learn.

The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition aims to stimulate entrepreneurship in education and connect social entrepreneurs to venture capitalists and other funders interested in improving education.

Today, Penn GSE convened its second annual Entrepreneurship in Education Summit, a meeting of learning-industry leaders and entrepreneurs to develop prescriptions for better government and K-12 systemic support of education entrepreneurs. The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition resulted from last year’s inaugural Entrepreneurship in Education Summit.

To see a video of the Milken-Penn GSE competition, click here.


Media contact: Jill DiSanto-Haines at 215-898-4820 or jdisanto@upenn.edu