Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to announce a new OSU-wide entrepreneurship center led by the College of Business that may be of interest to you, as well as your students, faculty and staff –InnovationX, the OSU Center of Excellence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. While the center lives in the College of Business, we serve students of all majors across OSU. You can find more information here: http://entrepreneurship.oregonstate.edu/.
Below is a quick summary of the services and resources available through the center. I invite you to share this information broadly and to partner with us in this effort:
- FACULTY AFFILIATION. We invite faculty who are engaged in innovation or entrepreneurship research/service/teaching to consider applying to be a Faculty Fellow of InnovationX. Faculty can complete our online interest form (https://bit.ly/2HojF87) to learn more. We look forward to building a robust community of scholars and thought leaders who are dedicated to innovation and entrepreneurship.
- LAUNCH PAD. Starting Fall of 2018, a new series of first-year courses for undergrads, called Launch Pad, will be open to first-year students of any major. The purpose of the Launch Pad course series is to attract students to OSU who have an interest in entrepreneurship, no matter what their major. These aspiring young entrepreneurs and their parents have expressed great excitement about this program. We believe Launch Pad will be a unique differentiator for OSU and a program that helps all colleges attract entrepreneurial students! If you’d like to partner to leverage Launch Pad to recruit entrepreneurial students into your undergrad programs, please let us know. Visit http://business.oregonstate.edu/innovationx/launch-pad for details.
- LAUNCH ACADEMY. Launch Academy is a new OSU student incubator that is open to serve all students (grad and undergrad) from any major across OSU. Launch Academy includes access to competitive seed funding, co-working space, mentoring and training to help students advance their ideas. Launch Academy students also have access to the DAMlab makerspace, the Austin Prototyping Workshop Series and the Austin Entrepreneurship Mentor Network. Visit http://business.oregonstate.edu/InnovationX/launch-academy for details.
- LAUNCH-U SPEAKER SERIES. Hosted on Thursdays each term, this speaker series features entrepreneurs and innovators from all backgrounds who share their experiences and help students develop their ideas. The speaker series is open for any OSU student to attend and is co-hosted by the Entrepreneurship Student Club and the College of Engineering. We welcome additional partners.
I hope you will encourage your students, faculty and staff to engage with these new resources. We anticipate extending InnovationX to Portland and Bend over the coming year. I’ll keep you posted as we proceed. I’m also copying Audrey Iffert-Saleem (Audrey.Iffert@oregonstate.edu) on this note. Audrey leads InnovationX and would be glad to chat with you about our work and how we can partner.
Best –
Mitzi
Mitzi M. Montoya, PhD
Sara Hart Kimball Dean
Oregon State University | College of Business | 541-737-6024
