The Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership has broadened the understanding and appreciation of entrepreneurship on the University of Illinois campus since its inception in 2004. We have expended our initiatives to include workshops, lectures, panel discussions, conferences, scholarships, and internships for numerous faculty, students, and community members. Here are some statistics on the importance of entrepreneurship at the University of Illinois.
View the list of entrepreneurial courses that have been taught at Illinois over the past several years.
Read the entrepreneurial course abstracts of our Academy Faculty Fellows:
2005 Fellows 2006 Fellows 2007 Fellows 2008 Fellows 2009 Fellows
Social Entrepreneurship and the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership
Visit the dedicated page
Social entrepreneurship is thriving at the University of Illinois, but also fragmented. Among the major activities have been the East St Louis Action Research Project, Prairienet and the Community Informatics Initiative. Since its inception in 2004, the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership has taken an active role, in separate endeavors and through collaboration with other units. A description of the major social entrepreneurship activities of the Academy follows.
Entrepreneurship Research Activities
The Academy has participated in multiple research grant proposals to external funders. This is a signal of acceptance of entrepreneurship as a scholarly research endeavor and a field that can add value to activities in many disciplines.
Entrepreneurial Leadership in Science, Technology and Learning (EnLiST) proposal to the National Science Foundation. The affiliations of the five principal investigators illustrate broad collaboration: Curriculum & Instruction (Education), Physics (Engineering), Chemistry (Liberal Arts & Sciences), Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Champaign, Illinois Unit 4 School District. This proposal has moved to the second round of consideration.
Globalizing Genomic Technologies is a proposal by the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) to IGERT, the Integrative Graduate Education and Researching Training program of the National Science Foundation. IGB is a cross-disciplinary research center, and the proposal involved faculty from the life sciences, law and business. The decision has not yet been announced.
The Academy participated in an NEH Challenge Grant proposal by the Illinois Center for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (I-CHASS). The leader of I-CHASS, Vernon Burton, is an internationally recognized historian who is also an active intrapreneur at Illinois who has led efforts to advance a digital humanities community and transfer technologies that support humanities scholarship. The decision has not yet been announced.
The Pervasive Technologies research group solicited our participation in a proposal to the National Science Foundation to establish a Center for Pervasive Health Technologies at Illinois. Among its activities, the Center would seek (in partnership with the Academy) to transfer health technologies, initiate new product and service ideas, and expose students and faculty to innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. The Center is a joint effort of the Colleges of Engineering and Applied Health Sciences. The initial proposal was rejected, but the Center investigators were encouraged to re-apply, and specific mention was made of the value of the entrepreneurship component.
The Center for Global Studies partnered with units in most colleges on campus, including the Academy, in preparing its successful proposal to the US Department of Education to renew its National Resource Center funding. The Academy component focused on supporting and disseminating research on the comparative study of entrepreneurship across cultures.