Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/201447
E+/G ETTY I MAG ES ENTREPRENEURSHIP is now implementing its biggest initiative yet: a curricular overhaul across all of the school's 32 campuses, as well as the 30 campuses of its second academic brand, Universidad TecMilenio. The goal is to infuse content related to entrepreneurship throughout every course and department, says Luis Arturo Torres, director of ITESM's Eugenio Garza-Lagüera Institute for Entrepreneurship. The overhaul also will integrate into the new curriculum the activity of the system's many accelerators, 100 business incubators, and 15 technology parks. This year the institute, along with centers on each individual campus, trained the school's 6,100 faculty members to integrate entrepreneurial problem-solving skills into their syllabi. "A physics professor could use the same projects in class, but perhaps he could require students to find their own resources, rather than providing them. Or he could ask them m to identify the problem they mu must m ust solve, rather than giving them t ng the problem," says Torres. . The school wants to ensure that o all of its students graduate with an duate u ua h nd llentrepreneurial spirit and a wil and will. "We wa W want ingness to take action. "We want ore than just our students to do more than ju than just ey see and e point out problems they see and olve them," hem," ask someone else to solve them," t o says Torres. "We want them to nt solutions on propose and implement solutions to the problems they see in their see thei their i communities, whether by startby startstarting new companies, working in n existing companies, implementmplementing ideas, or even proposing ne posing new ew laws. If we don't teach our stuh dents to be change agents, no o ents, one else is going to do it." GROWS UP A decade ago, the Kauffman Foundation based in Kansas City, Missouri, launched the Kauffman Campuses Initiative (KCI), which awarded up to US$5 million each to a number of colleges and universities to transform and amplify the way they taught entrepreneurship. Recipients of the grant also were required to match the funds two-to-one. The foundation gave KCI grants to eight schools in 2003 and to ten schools in 2006. The grants have helped KCI schools build comprehensive entrepreneurial ecosystems on their campuses. For example, the University of Texas El Paso used the funding to open its Center for Research, Entrepreneurship, and Innovative Enterprises, through which it commercializes its community's technology, promotes entrepreneurship among women and minorities, and develops interdisciplinary curricula. Syracuse University launched Enitiative, a collaboration among six universities and many organizations across Central New York. Through Enitiative, the partner schools created 40 new courses in entrepreneurship, infused 142 other courses with entrepreneurial elements, and increased their collective enrollments in these courses from 1,800 students to 7,500 students annually. KCI schools recently submitted reflective essays to the foundation that outlined the lessons they learned as they designed new strategies to promote entrepreneurship. "All were candid about the challenges they faced," says Wendy Torrance, the foundation's director of entrepreneurship. "They said that one of the biggest challenges was how they would define entrepreneurship in ways that fit their missions and cultures. Some noted that they didn't engage faculty early enough. Others enlisted a small number of passionate faculty, created faculty seminars, and held monthly gatherings. Slowly but surely, they engaged faculty from across the university." The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used its KCI funds to launch the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI), through which the school strengthened its existing entrepreneurial center and campus outreach programs. But CEI also presented a challenge for the university's Kenan-Flagler Business School: how to balance its service to business students with its service to the larger campus and community, says Ted Zoller, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Kenan-Flagler and director of its Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. Zoller also is a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Kauff In the end, Zoller believes that opening up entrepreneurship programs to the entire university creates "a healthy tension" for the business school. "The business school is a central tool bus in building a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem on camb pus, but it's not the only tool. We need to open up our pus communities and play a major leadership role on camco pus," he says. "The purpose of the Kauffman Campuses pu Initiative was to broaden the model of entrepreneurship In to include constituencies across campus." In August, the Kauffman Foundation released two reports on the outcomes of its Kauffman Campuses rep Initiative. They include "Entrepreneurship Education Ini Comes of Age on Campus" and "Entrepreneurial CamCo puses: Action, Impact, and Lessons Learned from the pu Kauffman Campuses Initiative." To read these reports, Ka as well as essays from 16 institutions that received grants through the Kauffman Campuses Initiative, gra visit www.kauffman.org/newsroom/entrepreneurshipvis education-comes-of-age-on-campus.aspx. ed BizEd November/December 2013 23