Moving on soon — Kathleen Sprouse

Kathleen at Kunde Winery, Sonoma, CA

Kathleen Sprouse has been an active, productive research assistant for the past two academic years. She will graduate in a couple of weeks. She plans to take a trip to Europe with her sisters (sounds like fun!), then she will prepare herself to enter graduate school. She will begin her masters in Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University, continuing her research interest in entrepreneurship.

Kathleen will complete her degree at MU in agricultural journalism with a minor in agribusiness management. She did an undergraduate research internship in 2009-2010, during which she created an interview protocol for entrepreneurs, using a combination of closed-end questions and narrative analysis. She is adding to her sample of entrepreneurs this year, then she intends to write a manuscript sometime this summer. Her protocol includes videotaping the interviews and coding the videos for particular narrative points. This research design will be carried on over the coming years as part of our long term plan to create and archive some searchable data on ag entrepreneurs.

Kathleen was named as a Mizzou 39 scholar in February; that is, one of 39 outstanding seniors at the University of Missouri. This is a coveted and signal honor here. The “39” is derived from the founding date of the University.

She has also been the designer of the communication package for The Entrepreneurship Project. Go there and see some of her posts and videos — great stuff! I hope we’ll have additional posts about her ongoing research soon.