The University's entrepreneurship education programs gained some pocket change over winter break when the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation awarded a $2 million grant to finance an "entrepreneurship engine" that will match students with business ideas and alumni advisers, among other initiatives.
The grant, awarded in December as part of the $25.5 million Kauffman Campuses Initiative designed to promote entrepreneurship education in universities, will be used "to stimulate entrepreneurship at large at Brown," said Maria Carkovic, administrative director of the Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship program.
The grant will be paid out over five years - the first installment is set to arrive next month - and funds will be used to create new courses and support student and faculty research, said Dean of Engineering Gregory Crawford. Funds will also be used for a "social entrepreneurship" program that will allow student groups to act as consultants to a local government institution or nonprofit organization and propose solutions to community problems, Carkovic said.
Crawford said the Kauffman grant will also be used to create a book explaining the role of entrepreneurship on Brown's campus and across all concentrations as well as an "entrepreneurship engine" that will pair students with alumni mentors. This networking tool will be developed with Rite Solutions, an engineering consulting company, such that it "sets up a student with a great idea with an alum who has a vast amount of experience," Crawford added.
These initiatives will be coordinated by the COE program and related departments, but the benefits are not just for COE concentrators. "The grant will definitely help more than the business students," said Judith Kone, vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. She noted that most people who start their own businesses study other subjects in college.
In order to receive the grant, the University had to demonstrate its commitment to the long-term financial health of entrepreneurship education by matching the Kauffman donation five-to-one, Kone said. The University will count the COE program's endowment as the matching funds.
Brown is the first Ivy League school to receive a Kauffman Campus Intitiative grant. The University's reputation proved attractive to the foundation.
"Brown's reputation as an Ivy was an interesting element," Kone said. She added that the University employs several "really dynamic champions of entrepreneurship," including Crawford.
"The open curriculum is very entrepreneurial in itself," Crawford said, adding that Brown's self-directed approach to learning lets students design their own educations in the same way that entrepreneurs make business decisions.
In addition to the COE program, the grant will be used to assist the graduate student Program in Innovation, Management and Entrepreneurship Engineering, the Brown Technology Partnerships, the Swearer Center for Public Service and the undergraduate student-led Entrepreneurship Program.
