WFU wins two awards from Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers

Wake Forest University is the recipient of two awards from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers, marking the first time any school has won two GCEC awards in the same year.

The awards were presented at the 2008 GCEC annual conference in Tucson, Ariz.

Wake Forest’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts and the Babcock Graduate School of Management’s Angell Center for Entrepreneurship collaborated to jointly win the GCEC Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovations and the GCEC Award for Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across the Disciplines.

Recipients of the Award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovations are judged on the general teaching and learning environment; student successes in new ventures; and evidence of innovation, such as developing new courses, implementing initiatives to support entrepreneurship teaching, integrating programs in the sciences and the arts and supporting student-organized activities.

“The Angell Center for Entrepreneurship and the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts have taken leadership roles in developing new courses, pedagogy and curriculum,” said Stan Mandel, director of the Angell Center for Entrepreneurship. “Winning these awards is an indication of our efforts to begin branding entrepreneurship as a university-wide phenomenon at Wake Forest.”

Mandel has participated in the start-up of more than 15 organizations in the medical device, biotechnology, education, retail, financial services, health care, consulting and nonprofit sectors. He advises and serves on the boards of student- and alumni-led start-up companies and is a frequent speaker and consultant on issues that influence success within family businesses, entrepreneurial ventures, and university-based entrepreneurship programs.

The Angell Center for Entrepreneurship offers programs that foster entrepreneurship, including the Babcock Elevator Competition, the Babcock Demon Incubator and the Family Business Center, which has programs that serve the North Carolina Triad and Charlotte metropolitan regions.

Recipients of the Award for Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across the Disciplines are judged on overall leadership and accomplishments, availability of programs to interested learners, involvement of non-business faculty, curriculum development, integrated campus-wide initiatives and interdisciplinary programs, innovative and model programs and key partnerships and collaborations.

“The Wake Forest program in entrepreneurship seeks to bridge across all disciplines – making entrepreneurship an integral and enduring part of the university experience,” said Elizabeth Gatewood, director of the Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts.

Gatewood leads Wake Forest’s efforts to instill entrepreneurial thinking and action across the campus. She has previously led entrepreneurship programs at Indiana University and the University of Georgia and directed a regional small business network in Houston. In 2004, Entrepreneur magazine named Gatewood one of the Top 10 entrepreneurship center directors in the country.

Wake Forest’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts was established in July 2004 to coordinate and oversee the range of related entrepreneurship activities across the various disciplines of the University. During the 2007-08 academic year, more than 10 percent (459) of Wake Forest’s 4,400 undergraduate students enrolled in one or more entrepreneurship courses, and 187 students from 28 different majors chose the new entrepreneurship and social enterprise minor, which has become the fastest growing and largest minor at Wake Forest.

Other 2008 GCEC award recipients are City University of New York’s Baruch College, the University of Arizona, the University of Boston, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wichita State University.

The GCEC is an organization with more than 200 members working together to foster the growth of university-based entrepreneurship centers and to address specific issues and challenges in entrepreneurship education.