More schools hook into entrepreneurship

GOOD TO GO: Julius Searight, left, is the 24-year-old founder of Food4Good, a socially conscious mobile soup kitchen. Above, he works with Johnson & Wales University alumni mentor Jeff Ledoux. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD
GOOD TO GO: Julius Searight, left, is the 24-year-old founder of Food4Good, a socially conscious mobile soup kitchen. Above, he works with Johnson & Wales University alumni mentor Jeff Ledoux. / PBN PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD

It wasn’t until this past year, her senior year, at Bryant University, that Melissa Ellard decided to take an elective in the school’s Global Entrepreneurship Program. She got more than some credit-hours from the choice.
As the 22-year-old Foxboro, Mass., resident finished off her bachelor’s degree in marketing, she created Fashion Force, which launches sometime in the next few months. Fashion Force is an online business platform that helps connect fashion designers and retailers, bypassing trade shows, an industry staple, and it was a finalist in the 2013 Rhode Island Business Plan Competition.
“I got hooked [on entrepreneurship],” said Ellard. “I just love learning and challenging myself and helping others with my platform and seeing how I can help change how the industry operates.”
At Bryant, Brown University and Johnson & Wales University, students are seeking out established curriculum-based entrepreneurship programs, and launching startups and careers they had even not imagined when they first enrolled.
And as these three universities enhance well-established entrepreneurship offerings, some other schools, including Providence College, Rhode Island College, the Rhode Island School of Design and Roger Williams University are developing coursework or clubs, and even beginning to network across campuses.
At Bryant, anywhere from 30 to 50 undergraduates work in teams during the academic year “trying to launch a dream,” said Sandra Potter, the director of the Global Entrepreneurship Program. That dream may start with brainstorming in class or it may be part of a required project, or even outside of the classroom. Teamwork is emphasized because rarely in industry will a person spend a career as a solo contributor, she said.
“Some of them are concentrating in entrepreneurship,” Potter said, “but it’s also common for someone to show up at my door that is not in the program and knows we have an incubator called Bryant Ventures and wants to join and learn.”
Last year, there was an increase in the number of freshmen expressing interest in entrepreneurship and innovation when arriving on campus, Potter said. “There’s a huge surge in awareness about entrepreneurship and innovation among incoming freshman,” she said.
At Brown, students in the School of Engineering can earn a Master of Science degree in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship through the year-long Program for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, also known as Prime.
Four years ago, Hamzah Ansari, 28, of Providence, earned his M.S. from Brown and with a partner founded Accelereach, a health care information technology company. The firm has three employees and is thriving he said, declining to disclose company revenue.
“I never saw myself as an engineer specifically,” Ansari, said. “I saw myself as being in a management position. Prime was specifically focused on managing technology and taught the skills of managing a small technology company or startup. We learned different things from every one of the professors, some of whom are entrepreneurs in their own lives.”
Graduates in the Johnson & Wales entrepreneurship and food-service entrepreneurship programs, as well as entrepreneurship students at Bryant and Brown, may take a strictly independent entrepreneurial path or work in an established business sector, honing their skills and developing innovative products or services that match the needs and resources of their employers, school program directors said.
Some will launch a startup early, others later, some not at all, directors said.
“Many come in thinking, ‘Wow, I want to be the next Bill Gates,’ or whatever,” said Brown engineering professor Eric Suuberg, who is co-director and co-founder of Prime. “[Then], they see the element that’s involved, and decide, ‘It’s this part of it that fascinates me,’ and they go in that direction.”
In Brown’s Prime program, the work begins with determining what constitutes a “commercial-izeable opportunity,” Suuberg said.
“We hand them a portfolio of projects and say, ‘Here’s the universe of technologies. Where’s there a business in this?’ ” he said. “That’s the kind of thing that somebody doing a startup has to instinctively do.” Suuberg called the master’s degree program “uniquely Brown” and decidedly not an MBA, which focuses on traditional business management theory and practices. Prime teaches about taking an idea from concept to startup to commercialization, he said. Launched in 2006 but developed from earlier paradigms and course sequences, Prime has doubled the number of students from 15 to as many as 30, Suuberg said.
“Students clamor for this,” he said.
At JWU, the 20-year-old entrepreneurship program was rededicated in 2002 as the Larry Friedman International Center for Entrepreneurship within the College of Business, but became universitywide to students regardless of major in 2011, said John Robitaille, the center’s executive in residence.
“The underlying philosophy of the center is that any JWU student or alum who wants to explore entrepreneurship can engage with the center,” Robitaille said. “Our mission is to help transform students into entrepreneurs, and support them in the transformation of their ideas or ventures into commercial or social enterprises.”
Taking JWU’s program at the center taught Julius Searight, 24, of Providence, that he wanted to open his own business. The culinary major founded Food4Good, a socially conscious mobile soup kitchen that is designed to reduce the stigma that soup kitchen users may suffer from when seeking assistance. Now all Searight needs is a food truck and acceptance of his application for nonprofit status.
Born with cerebral palsy, Searight is a determined social entrepreneur despite his disabilities, Robitalle said.
“I’ve definitely seen the need in my life for giving back,” Searight says, “because people have helped me.”
Like the programs at Brown and Bryant, JWU’s entrepreneurship program, which includes a food service entrepreneurship program launched in 1994, is proving to be popular. Robitaille said it’s a sign of the times, and an outgrowth of the Great Recession.
“Many students who cannot find a job or do not want to work for someone else desire to at least explore the entrepreneurship option,” he said. Using an incubator on campus to develop projects, students at JWU take nine classes as they experiment with opportunities with outside companies, work on a fellow student’s startup, or apply for an internship at the center to earn credit while working on their own business plans and ventures.
Founded four years ago, Bryant’s entrepreneurship program is meant to expose the entire student body to thinking about innovation and entrepreneurship, said Potter.
“Our mission is not just to have students graduate with this concentration, but for all students in the different colleges learn what is entrepreneurship, how to innovate and how to evaluate an idea. The way the American economy is going to come back roaring is to out-innovate the competition globally,” she said.
Not housed within Bryant’s Global Entrepreneurship Program but connected to it, is the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, a national group. Bryant’s chapter has been cited as the best chapter in the nation four out of the last six years, Potter said.
Regardless of whether students choose the GEP, the university introduces all students to entrepreneurship and innovation in their freshman year through a freshman course and an innovation lab that the university runs in January, she added.
Without established programs, PC, RIC, RISD and RWU are among the schools offering some coursework and clubs. RIC has entrepreneurship courses within its School of Management, said Dean David Blanchette. A class on launching a “green” enterprise is also available.
And at Providence College, junior Joshua Kasper and fellow students Alex Acunzo and Julia DePalma have started a student club called the Entrepreneurship Society. Thanks to an alumnus, the networking group is not only reaching across campuses and to the state’s entrepreneurship culture through Betaspring and the Founder’s League, but this fall it will launch a virtual entrepreneurship incubator. The Web portal will allow would-be student entrepreneurs to connect.
“It’s important for the society’s mission that we bring in people from all different disciplines,” Kasper said. “We want everybody and anyone.” •

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