IMAGINE the Year 2020. Recent graduates are the leaders of a new generation of entrepreneurs and trendsetters, creating technologies to replace hydrocarbon fuels, starting up economically independent arts industries, and launching companies to displace Microsoft and AT&T. Students don’t wait for graduation to launch businesses and explore radical new ideas.
The Syracuse Campus-Community Entrepreneurship Initiative (Enitiative) is a cross-campus entrepreneurial strategy that grows out of Syracuse University’s vision of Scholarship in Action. Enitiative encourages students, faculty and administration from all disciplines to think entrepreneurially, enabling them to experience entrepreneurship as a powerful force for change. Through Enitiative, faculty, inside and outside the business school, incorporate entrepreneurship into their classrooms. Students from every major are exposed to entrepreneurship as a vehicle to open up life opportunities.
Entrepreneurship is as relevant to art, music, and science as it is to business. In the words of Margie Hughto, a professor in the ceramics department at Syracuse University, “Artists who make their living by their own hands, talent, and vision are, by necessity, entrepreneurs who have the added challenge of re-inventing themselves continuously – not only to answer their own personal passions, but to keep a fresh sales ‘product’ before the public.”
Through Enitiative, faculty, inside and outside the business school, incorporate entrepreneurship into their classrooms.
Areas of Entrepreneurship Education
Enitiative focuses on three areas of entrepreneurship:
Technology Entrepreneurship: transforming ideas and technologies into growth-oriented start-up companies.
Neighborhood Entrepreneurship: fostering the creation of local businesses to build a neighborhood in which residents are economically independent and deeply engaged in the community.
Arts Entrepreneurship: helping artists launch sustainable ventures while integrating art into all aspects of community life.
Syracuse University has begun to re-imagine its institution and have launched a bold movement founded on the strength of its entrepreneurial tradition. Syracuse students don’t wait until graduation to solve real-world problems; they are provided the tools to generate ideas and explore possibilities now.
Cross-campus Entrepreneurial Initiatives
Cross-campus entrepreneurial initiatives include:
The Near West Side Initiative: revitalizing a community by creating an entrepreneurial arts community, technology businesses, and designing new community and commercial spaces.
The Center for Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems: an industry-university collaboration that creates entrepreneurial environmental and energy innovations for a sustainable future.
The Student Start Up Accelerator: a collaboration between Syracuse University and the Syracuse Technology Garden to educate, mentor, and provide angel funding to student technology start ups.
