Six faculty members and seven students represented WKU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the annual meeting of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization in Fort Worth, Texas.
The conference featured more than 70 entrepreneurs, with about 105 universities represented and more than 1,000 students, faculty and aspiring entrepreneurs in attendance.
The CEO meeting Oct. 27-29 also included a workshop for members of the Coleman Fellows, a nationwide entrepreneurship program supported by the Coleman Foundation.
“The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is involved with the Coleman Foundation in a major effort to infuse entrepreneurship across disciplines here at WKU and across more than 21 universities in the United States,” said Dr. R. Wilburn Clouse, director of the CEI and the Mattie Newman Ford Professor of Entrepreneurship. “As part of that effort the Center is supporting in part the efforts of 11 WKU faculty members as Coleman Fellows to infuse the concepts of self-employment in courses outside of the Gordon Ford College of Business.”
As part of the Coleman Fellows program, the WKU faculty members are expected to attend Coleman cross-disciplinary think tank conferences and either the CEO meeting or the Self Employment in the Arts (SEA) Conference.
In addition to Dr. Clouse, WKU Coleman Fellows who attended the CEO meeting were: Krist Schell, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Linda Gonzales, Agriculture; Stacy Wilson, Electrical Engineering; Ed Kintzel, Physics; and Vicki Bagwell, Public Relations.
The Coleman Fellows also are invited to select one of their students to attend the CEO or SEA conference where faculty and students are able to meet 100 of entrepreneurs and thousands of students with new and promising ideas.
“This is a great example of carrying instruction outside of the classroom, networking with others from across the country, and infusing self-employment ideas across disciplines and across the students population here at WKU,” Dr. Clouse said.
As part of the CEO conference, the Coleman Fellows attended a Think Tank Session with the group’s president, founders and Foundation staff. Dr. Clouse chaired a session on cross-disciplinary evaluation. Bagwell made a presentation on her work in Public Relations and, earlier this fall, she received an outstanding teaching award at the Experiential Entrepreneurship Classroom program at Oklahoma State University.
WKU students who attended the CEO meeting were: Joseph Stratton, a film major from Bowling Green; Tara Wink, a physics major from Bowling Green; Justin Henderson, an entrepreneurship major from Bowling Green; Katherine Power, an entrepreneurship major from Elkton; Patricia Payne, an entrepreneurship major from Louisville; Dawn Wientjes, a public relations major from Metropolis, Ill.; and Weston Faulkner, a management major from Louisville.
The conference provided students with an opportunity to attend about 80 sessions and to network with more than 1,200 students from more than 50 universities. Faculty members also had an opportunity to network with more than 80 faculty members from 21 universities.
Funding for the program was made possible by the Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Coleman Foundation.
Contact: Wil Clouse, (270) 745-4142.
