Due to the success of the DECA chapter, the campus is home to one of 10 Accelerator classes in the United States. Accelerator is a class that gives high school students the chance to take their ideas and turn them into real businesses. 

“It’s not just experiencing entrepreneurship,” senior Andrew Chase said. “That is a part of it, but entrepreneurship requires a huge degree of knowledge in the field. It’s not just learning how to start a company, it’s also learning the skills necessary for it. There’s a wide degree of things that you learn.”

 Accelerator is the second year of Incubator, a class where high school students work in teams to come up with ideas for their own limited liability company (LLC). Even when the students leave high school, they can still take their companies with them and work with their teams to get them to the public. They work with product designers, industrial designers, entrepreneurs, CEOs or any others in the field.

“The collaboration aspect is one of the reasons why I love business so much,” senior  Vincent Dinh said. “The idea that you are able to converse with others who have the same ideals as you, is amazing to me. Business is also very competitive, and I am a pretty competitive person so I think it just fits very well into my personality.”

Incubator and Accelerator originated from Chicago. It branched out over time, giving students all over the country a chance to see the business industry themselves. The students have the opportunity to actually make it big. In fact, one of the Incubator companies went on Shark Tank and got funding for their company.

Chase’s company, Koala Wear LLC, was one of three teams to get funding for his company last year during their final pitch.

“It helps athletes run and not get distracted by anything like a cooling towel,” Chase said “It just allows athletes to perform to the best of their ability. In the future, we want to expand to other cooling products like wristbands and something around your neck. I think high school teaches you a lot of fundamentals and a lot of general things. That can be really helpful once you go off to college and learn something specific like a major. This interesting thing about this classes that it is actually applicable to life. You’re actually doing something. You’re learning this skill and you’re applying them in the real world. I think something different from what we do here the majority of the time, and that’s really cool.”