Celebrating Scholars Who Think and Act in Entrepreneurial Ways

We created the EPICentre Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellows Program to foster and celebrate inter-disciplinary collaboration around creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. We are focused on the role of entrepreneurial thinking and acting within any discipline or academic area on the University of Windsor campus. We approach entrepreneurship as the recognition and exploitation of opportunity, where opportunity is a process of a means of empowerment and transformation through creative and innovative behaviours. It is a behaviour that is not defined or limited by context. Beyond its conventional conception in a start-up context, it can include social entrepreneurship, public sector entrepreneurship, academic entrepreneurship, or notions such as the entrepreneurial artist or entrepreneurial engineer, among many other applications. Our focus is the entrepreneurial mindset and how the talents, ingenuity and passion of faculty members can be used to affect innovative change. We see faculty innovations as a vehicle for transforming campuses, communities, and disciplines.

 

Who is Eligible?

 

The program is open to all full-time UW faculty members, including those from all disciplines and academic areas on the campus. We seek academic entrepreneurs or faculty interested in integrating an entrepreneurial mindset and related concepts, tools, and frameworks into their home discipline; particularly into their research, teaching, or outreach activities.

 

Apply to be a Fellow

 

Applications to become an Entrepreneurship Faculty Fellow are accepted on a rolling basis, with up to ten new fellows being accepted each year. To qualify, a faculty member needs to propose an initiative that reflects the interface between his/her own academic area and entrepreneurship.

 

The EPICentre Faculty Fellows fund will fund a student(s) supervised by the faculty member in his/her own academic area who will help with the initiative. Proposals can center on any professional activity that the faculty member plans over the next year.

 

For example, project proposals can focus upon the:

• creation of activities within a program that examine entrepreneurial precepts within the faculty member’s home discipline
• pursuit of scholarly research that connects aspects of entrepreneurship to one’s home discipline or explores aspects of entrepreneurship through the lens of that discipline;
• commercialization of some technology or intellectual property developed by a faculty member;
• undertaking of a community engagement project that centers on innovation and the fostering of entrepreneurial solutions to societal needs.

 

If accepted to the program, the Fellow will be appointed to an Internal Board of Advisors at EPICentre. In addition to this project, Fellows will get together for informal bi-monthly lunches to discuss what each is doing and explore interdisciplinary questions related to entrepreneurial behaviour, and the nature of an entrepreneurial university. The activities of the Fellows will be featured on the EPICentre website and at the annual EPICentre Kickoff event. Fellows will be appointed for one year, although the appointment is renewable.

 

Sample Interdisciplinary Issues

• Green entrepreneurship
• Social entrepreneurship
• Tech entrepreneurship
• Agricultural entrepreneurship
• Public sector entrepreneurship
• Media entrepreneurship
• Anthropology of entrepreneurship
• Institutional entrepreneurship
• The entrepreneurial artist
• Historical entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurial communities
• Gender and minority entrepreneurship
• Sports entrepreneurship
• Psychology of entrepreneurship
• The entrepreneurial educator
• Health entrepreneurship

 

For more information, contact Dr. Francine Schlosser, University of Windsor Golden Jubilee Professor in Business at fschloss@uwindsor.ca or 519-253-3000 ext 3107.