Kettering wins $225,000 grant for entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship studies - Page 2
In 2006 and 2007 respectively, Kettering received two $50,000 grants through KEEN to implement courses to instill the entrepreneurial mindset and develop the Kettering Entrepreneur Society (KES, www.kesociety.com). The KES is a student-lead organization that sponsors business plan competitions, provides support services and seed funding for start-up businesses in an effort at promoting an entrepreneurial culture at Kettering based on innovation. Developed through the efforts of Dr. Massoud Tavakoli, professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Andy Borchers, interim head of the Dept. of Business, with assistance from Dr. William Riffe, professor of Manufacturing Engineering, entrepreneurial studies and the KES have shown tremendous success in attracting students interested in exploring their business ideas and launching a number of viable companies in Michigan.
Drs. Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern have acknowledged the grants to Kettering and IIT by stating, “As we have watched IIT and Kettering develop their engineering entrepreneurship education with the initial support they earned from our Foundation, we have seen an alignment and a pattern of accomplishment that bodes well for both the future of their engineering colleges and, more importantly, for the United States. With the changes these colleges plan to make within their engineering curriculum, we feel their graduates will be better prepared to inculcate the entrepreneurial mindset in their engineering work, whether or not they themselves become entrepreneurs. We are pleased to be able to further the work of the universities in their mission to develop engineers who will develop technically based solutions that will meet unmet market needs that will serve a global economy.”
According to Jim Rahn, Kern Family Foundation president, “we are pleased to see that Kettering and IIT have been able to ‘catch the gleam’ from the Kern’s vision and take it to the next level. With these grants, we are excited about the future of our KEEN network of engineering colleges and we anticipate that the other KEEN colleges will respond in like manner to form a network of universities across the country that will synergistically create an engineering entrepreneurial force that will be sustained in the years to come. This may be a new paradigm for higher education – universities working together as a united force.”
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