‘Kauffman Campus’ award will fuel campus, state entrepreneurship

Gov. Jim Doyle and Chancellor John Wiley announced today that the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has named the University of Wisconsin–Madison one of its nine “Kauffman Campuses,” and has received $5 million to help train students in the principles and practices of entrepreneurship and spur greater research commercialization statewide.

In October, Gov. Doyle announced his “Jobs for the Future” initiative that outlined his administration’s efforts to work with the UW–Madison on this initiative.

“Entrepreneurship is key to growing Wisconsin’s economy and this funding will help our young people be prepared to start businesses, particularly in high-tech, high-wage fields,” Gov. Doyle says. “Our efforts, through the Kauffman initiative, will help us to recruit and train the next generation of Wisconsin entrepreneurs and give them access to needed capital.”

The Kansas City-based Kauffman Foundation launched the initiative with the first eight campuses in 2004 to “transform the way colleges and universities prepare students for success in the American economy.” The competitive awards are designed to enliven the curriculum with new ways to instill “the spirit and skills of entrepreneurial studies” across academic fields and to expand the role of technology transfer in communities.

“Being named a ‘Kauffman Campus‘ provides an opportunity to broaden our great legacy of teaching, research and outreach at UW–Madison and will also help grow Wisconsin’s economy,” says Wiley. “Wisconsin’s leadership in research and development is yielding many opportunities for commercial ventures, and this program will help us train the young entrepreneurs who will make those opportunities a reality.”

“The teaching and learning component of the Kauffman grant is designed to bring entrepreneurship education to a much broader range of students, beyond the traditional curriculum that exists in business programs,” says Charles Hoslet, managing director of the UW–Madison Office of Corporate Relations (OCR), which led a campus-wide development of the proposal.

The UW–Madison proposal anticipates statewide involvement, with partnerships across the UW System and with organizations such as the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, the Wisconsin Technology Council and the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Network.

The plan calls for a number of new student education initiatives, including the development of a residential learning community focused on undergraduate students with an interest in entrepreneurship and establishing new courses in entrepreneurship for students across campus.

The Kauffman Campus Initiative at UW–Madison will also work closely with the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. That effort will involve establishing internships at the WID for undergraduate and graduate students interested in research commercialization and technology transfer; creation of a seed grant program for translational research; development of community and business outreach activities; and creation of an entrepreneurial law clinic.

The initiative also calls for partnering with the Department of Financial Institutions in implementing the recently announced “Wisconsin Venture Center” to ensure entrepreneurs have access to capital.

It will also bring entrepreneurial education programs to targeted inner-city communities in Milwaukee and will establish a program on entrepreneurship for Milwaukee youth through the city’s Urban Entrepreneur Partnership. That effort would tie into UW–Madison’s highly successful PEOPLE program, which provides pre-college readiness training for more than 1,000 Wisconsin young people.

While initial work will focus on establishing the program at UW–Madison, the ultimate goal is to reach campuses and communities beyond Madison and replicate the work done in Madison at other UW System campuses.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which has an asset base of $2 billion, was established in the mid 1960s to advance two core areas: entrepreneurship and youth education. As part of Kauffman Campus Initiative, the selected universities pledge to raise more than three times the money they receive from the foundation to sustain the programs long-term.

Other winning campuses include: Arizona State University, $5 million; Brown University, $2 million; Carnegie Mellon University, $3 million; Georgetown University, $3 million; New York University, $1 million; Purdue University, $1.5 million; Syracuse University, $3 million; and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, $2 million.