The Appalachian
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Thursday, March 5, Tuesday, February 24,2015 2015
Up by the BootstrAPPs Student enterpreneurial store works to improve its performance, revenue
by Gerrit Van Genderen Managing Editor
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hen Emily Haas assumed the role of manager for BootstrAPPs in September 2013, the store was facing hardships that were close to making the student-run retail business irrelevant. The hardships included struggling to stay open and the lack of employees and volunteers. Haas, a junior hospitality and tourism management major said the store was open roughly five hours per week before she took over, which resulted in a lack of ability to sell any products on a consistent basis. Since Haas became manager, BootstrAPPs jumped from six to 19 vendors, has reached 24 students who work in the store, and is consistently able to remain open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. It is located in Appalachian State University’s bookstore near the market. The style of business BootstrAPPs runs also separates it from almost every other store in the nation, due to it being completely studentrun and exclusive to selling student-made products. “We needed our brand to be known more,” Haas said, “but before we could advertise and start to market, we had to make an effort to be open consistently. It was going to waste our time to pro-
App State improves Gen-Ed program flexibility by Josh Wharton Intern News Reporter
of the American Red Cross Club at Appalachian. “They provide services for so many people in the darkest times of their lives, not only with the relief work seen with major disasters, but also in the local community.” Appalachian reached its 1,000 pint goal in 2008, which put the university in the top 10 in the country. At the same time, Appalachian broke North Carolina’s record for the largest single-day blood
Revisions in the General Education Program have been created and are on their way to being fully approved by the necessary faculty through the efforts of many departments, administrators and Appalachian State University staff. General Education Assistant Director Kristin Hyle said this revised program should be effective starting fall 2015, if all goes as planned. These revisions should give students more flexibility in mapping out their General Education experience. “This also opens up the program for departments and courses that might not have been a good fit for Gen-Ed before,” Hyle said. The First Year Seminar, writing requirements, quantitative literacy, wellness literacy and science inquiry requirements will all remain exactly the same. The other perspectives, comprising 21 hours of the Gen-Ed program, are the main focus of these revisions. “The perspectives will be gone entirely and the 21 hours are now distributed between a 9-hour integrated learning experience...and the remaining 12 are in a menu-type system called the liberal studies experience.” The integrated learning experience is similar to the themes on the current Gen-Ed system. There are currently 16 themes to choose from on the integrated learning experience. Hyle said the liber-
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SEE GEN-ED PAGE 4
Gerrit Van Genderen
BootstrAPPs, Appalachian State University’s student entrepreneur store, currently has 19 vendors that sell a variety of products. The store is run completely by Appalachian students and only sells student-made products.
mote something that’s never open.” As a result, the BootstrAPPs executive board did a large amount of recruiting during fall 2013 and saw the store take great strides by spring 2014. The store, which was originally known as the E-Store, was created in 2010 as part of a $1 million grant through the Transportation Insight Center for Entrepreneurship to give students the ability to gain experience in the field. Through a rebranding initiative in the spring of 2012, the E-Store was renamed
BootstrAPPs. During the time the store was known as the E-Store, Erich Schlenker, director for the Center of Entrepreneurship said there was an impression that it was an e-commerce facility, which prevented it from building a customer population. “BootstrAPPs includes ‘APP,’ it implies that you’re kind of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and doing it yourself,” Schlenker said. Part of the rebranding revolved around adding more employees to the staff and retaining them. Roughly half
of BootstrAPPs’ “employees” are volunteers. Due to BootstrAPPs’ financing structure, Haas said the store is focused more so on the students being able to make revenue off of their products, not the store making revenue. Vendors make 80 percent of everything they sell through BootstrAPPs while 10 percent goes to the bookstore, 5 percent goes to BootstrAPPs to cover fixed costs and 5 percent goes as commission to the store’s sellers. The 5 percent commission
SEE BOOTSTRAPPS PAGE 5
March is American Red Cross Awareness Month by Chamian Cruz News Reporter
Halle Keighton
Appalachian State University has consistently held the largest single-day blood drive in the United States and is one of the nation’s top 10 blood donation universities.
March is Red Cross Awareness Month, recognized yearly to show appreciation to one of the largest organizations that helps people in need, and to recognize the involvement of students at Appalachian State University, whether members or not of the American Red Cross Club. “I feel that the Red Cross is one of the most important organizations in our country,” said Jessica Roland, senior nursing major and president