faculty_fellows

The Faculty Fellows Program is designed to increase the number and scope of courses and experiences in entrepreneurship available at the graduate level. The program serves to stimulate and nurture the entrepreneurial spirit in all students without regard to academic major. Each fall, the Academy solicits proposals from faculty interested in creating or revising courses in their primary discipline to add entrepreneurial principles and/or pedagogies. Faculty selected to be Academy Fellows will receive up to $15,000 toward the creation or revision of these courses. The process is highly competitive; typically, ten or fewer Fellowships are awarded.

Download the request for a 2010 Faculty Fellow Proposal

View the bios and abstracts of the 2005    2006    2007    2008

2009 University of Illinois Faculty Fellows

2009 Parkland Faculty Fellow
2009 Faculty Fellows

Steve Anderson

Associate Professor, School of Social Work

Abstract: Social Entrepreneurship

Through this course, the School of Social Work hopes to ultimately complete the incorporation of entrepreneurial training across our four primary teaching audiences: (1) undergraduates, (2) Masters of Social Work students, (3) Ph.D. students and (4) community agency professionals seeking continuing education opportunities. This course will build on an initial social entrepreneurship course being tested in Spring 2009 and explore the development of a certificate program targeted on social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial nonprofit management for community agencies. The course will be an introductory social entrepreneurship course targeted at social work students in our new Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students and other social science students taking the course as an elective. The certificate component of the proposal is intended to asses the feasibility of establishing a certificate program at UIUC targeted at nonprofit agency personnel. The product of this activity will be a white-paper feasibility study that includes recommendations on the viability of such a program and recommendations for next steps.

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Tina Besley & Michael A. Peters

Educational Policy Studies, College of Education

Abstract: Education, Entrepreneurship and Creativity in the Global Knowledge Economy

This new course aims to develop a critical understanding of the notions of entrepreneurship and creativity in education as important components in the global knowledge economy.  In the knowledge economy with an emphasis on symbolic manipulation and extended chains of sign value, often ad digital goods, the notion of the entrepreneur takes on different forms and different roles that require clarification and explanation in relation to education policy.  The most important difference is the shift away from focusing on the lone entrepreneur to talking about entrepreneurship that takes place as team-work and other forms of collaboration embedded within networks and systems.  The highlighting of entrepreneurship enables a shift away from the romantic figure of the lone and heroic individual who is willing to take risks (actually a figure of Romanticism in the strict sense) to entrepreneurship as the model for a society or as a set of infrastructural conditions enabling creativity.  This course will provide an introduction to the history of entrepreneurship before clarifying and exploring the role of social, public and academic entrepreneurship in the field of education.  Assignments will involve students to apply their knowledge in global contexts.  The course will enable graduate students in GSE and others from UIUC to learn about engaging with the global knowledge economy. 

The course will be offered annually in the online masters program in Global Studies in Education, College of Education, and will involve collaboration with other academic units of UIUC.

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Ellen M. Evans

Kinesiology & Community Health, Applied Health Sciences

Abstract: FIT-PALS: Financial Ideas & Tactics for Physical Activity Leadership Strategies

The overarching goal of this course is to provide practical experience and content information on management practices for the administration of health/fitness programs including personal training programs. This project will develop 1) a 400-level fitness business course (open to upper-level undergraduates and applied MS students) to teach entrepreneurship and administration aspects of personal training and fitness/health programs and 2) a 400-level fitness business internship (with the fitness management course being a prerequisite) to be completed within Campus Recreation on the UIUC campus. Because these courses will assume content specific knowledge (exercise prescription practices, etc.) it will only be open to K& CH majors with the background or by permission of the instructor. Upon completion of the fitness management course, students will be prepared to be program leaders in larger fitness/health organizations such as Campus Recreation, develop their own business in true entrepreneurial spirit, or perhaps pursue advanced training to position themselves to more successfully harness opportunities and resources to create new business enterprises.

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Andrea Golato

Germanic Languages & Literatures, Liberal Arts and Sciences

Abstract: Educational Entrepreneurship: Teaching Language Across the Curriculum

This is a new PhD level course for all graduate students from the various language departments in the School of Literatures, Cultures, Linguistics (SLCL) and the Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education Program. It prepares students to develop undergraduate courses on language for specific purposes that incorporate entrepreneurial principles (course students develop could be “German for Engineering”, “French for Music”, “Spanish for Medical Students”, “Business Chinese”, etc.). In this course, the students will 1) learn how other teachers have engaged in educational entrepreneurship in order to transform individual courses and/or entire language programs by combining language instruction with the teaching of specific subject matter in order to fulfill student or market demands, to remain viable, and/or to attract new student populations; 2) read about entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship and learn how teachers of modern languages have incorporated such concepts into their classes; 3) engage in educational entrepreneurship themselves by emulating the efforts of educational entrepreneurs, thereby developing their own syllabi in an area of Language Across the Curriculum; and 4) be taught with entrepreneurial methods and activities (analyzing case studies thereby learning from success and failure of others, identifying opportunities and needs, writing of a business plan for the course, location of resources, etc. This course is viewed as a “multiplier” course in that it reaches future educators and encourages them to include entrepreneurial content and methods into their own (future) undergraduate course.

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Fred Gottheil

Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Abstract: Economics and Entrepreneurship

This course will focus on the role the entrepreneur plays in almost every stage of micro analysis, that is, in the course’s analysis of production costs, of profit maximization, of price determination under conditions of monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, and perfect competition, of regulation, of wage determination, of rent and the interest rate. It is a matter of making explicit, in as much detail as possible, what is already implicit in the analysis. Entrepreneurship will be developed as an integral part of the course’s reading material and lecture discussion.

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James Hay

Institute of Communications Research

Abstract: Creative Industries in an Enterprise Culture

This is a course, potentially the first in a sequence of two, that explores the conception, role and place of entrepreneurship in the “creative industries’ as they move from a model of mass communication to one of individualized “produsage,” where the producer and the user are increasingly the same person.

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Tracy Sulkin

Political Science & Communication, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Abstract: Political Entrepreneurship and Policy Innovation

Political entrepreneurship is the sustained and focused investment of time and resources on major policy issues. Entrepreneurs both inside and outside of elected office play a critical role in U.S. politics, bringing new issues to the government and public agendas, providing expertise, and promoting the formulation and implementation of innovative policies. This course will focus on explaining the behavior of these entrepreneurs and assessing the effects of their actions on the scope and content of public policy. In particular, we will explore the processes of issue definition and agenda-setting (i.e., how conditions come to be seen as problems amenable to government action, and then how those problems are prioritized), investigate what motivates elected officials to undertake entrepreneurial action, examine the contributions of non-elected actors like bureaucrats and representatives of interest groups and think tanks, and evaluate the prospects for innovation in American politics. Students will have the opportunity to apply theories of policy change and elite political behavior to real-world politics through a series of projects that ask them to trace attention and action on an issue over time and to analyze the behavior of legislators, presidents, interest groups, and bureaucrats on that issue. The goals of the course are to equip students with an in-depth understanding of the processes underlying policymaking and to foster an appreciation for the role of political entrepreneurs in solving social, economic, and foreign policy problems.

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Bruce Wicks

Recreation, Sport and Tourism, College of Applied Health Sciences

Abstract: Entrepreneurship and Recreational Enterprises

This course will add a new section to Recreation Sport and Tourism 218, Entrepreneurship and Recreation Enterprises, that expands the focus of the class to address social entrepreneurship. The goal is to provide an intensive community-based learning experience in East St. Louis that will use a business planning model to explore and hopefully execute a resource generating enterprise for a local not-for-profit organization.

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Montserrat Oliveras-Heras

Parkland College, Associate Professor, Humanities Department

Abstract: Intermediate Spanish 104 with Honors

Anybody who has accepted the challenge of learning a foreign language has encountered a great sense of disorientation and frustration when facing, for the first time, a real conversational situation with a person of the target language. A variant of Spanish 104 will enable students to overcome this challenging situation. A team of students in SPA 104 will maximize their interaction with persons of the target language, while still being part of an academic environment, by going out of the classroom and into the community. The students will recognize social entrepreneurial opportunities within their community by using their combined knowledge of Spanish and computer skills to teach basic computer skills to adults in a major Latino population area within the Champaign-Urbana city limits. In doing so, the students will maximize their use of listening and oral skills in the second language while building awareness of the cultural and social aspects of the Spanish speaking individuals within their community. This process will aid in building a bridge between these two sectors of the Champaign-Urbana population, enabling them to contemplate realities and possibilities that until their interaction had been unfamiliar and out of reach.

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Janet Gaffney

Special Education

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Raymond Price

Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering

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