WFU receives grant to further undergraduate entrepreneurship

The grant will support the Calloway School’s Center for Undergraduate Entrepreneurship, an interdisciplinary hub that will provide physical facilities and business mentoring to undergraduate liberal arts students. The money will be used in a variety of ways, including bringing guest speakers to campus who are successful entrepreneurs from a liberal arts background; expanding entrepreneurial resource materials in the university’s library; making monetary awards for best new venture proposals; awarding summer stipends for students working on a new venture; and developing curriculum.

The center, directed by Associate Professor of Business Page West, will be housed in the Calloway School’s new F.M. Kirby Hall, set to open in fall 2003. West says Wake Forest, like many colleges and universities, is seeing more student entrepreneurs on campus who are not necessarily business majors.

“Students from the liberal arts and sciences are very creative and every bit as fascinated by new ventures as business students,” West says. “But they often do not realize that entrepreneurial pursuit of their own arts-based or sciences-based ideas is a real career possibility. The Kauffman Foundation grant will bring greater exposure to the link between the liberal arts and entrepreneurship, and will help us develop resources that assist students in turning their ideas into reality.”

West says Wake Forest is one of only a few universities that provide renewable scholarships in entrepreneurship. The university has offered an annual Presidential Scholarship in entrepreneurship since 1987.

Ranked 25th among all undergraduate business programs by U.S. News and World Report, the Calloway School is one of 52 colleges and universities – one of five in North Carolina – to receive a Kauffman Collegiate Entrepreneurship Network grant.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City works with partners to encourage entrepreneurship across America and improve the education of children and youth. The Kauffman Foundation was established in the mid 1960s by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman.