School:University of Massachusetts Amherst

Campus Overview

Team DASA

The University of Massachusetts Amherst has done a great deal, especially recently, to promote student innovation and entrepreneurship. New funding and the new Entrepreneurship Center are two excellent examples of this. From a wide range of classes, to events, to major and minor opportunities, UMass offers many opportunities for students with an entrepreneurial spirit. In short, the campus ecosystem does a great job of promoting student innovation.

UMass faculty members are certainly supported in their entrepreneurial ventures, as UMass is a top research school and there is a great deal of funding that goes to research and carrying out venture ideas...However, UMass can claim up to 70 percent of the venture started by faculty or students, which hurts the drive to innovate inside the school. That being stated, the business school hires many individuals whom have been successful in entrepreneurship, which is telling about the culture UMass fosters. One example of a faculty member hired is Bob Lowry Johnson, who owns Bueno Y Sano in downtown Amherst. Faculty innovation and exploration of their entrepreneurial potential is valued at UMass.

Facilitating university-industry collaboration is definitely a weakness in the UMass ecosystem. When we were doing research for our landscape canvas, we found very little information about industrial parks.Though UMass is a top research center, there really aren’t makerspaces or centers for students interested in entrepreneurship to work in; hence, this is an area of improvement for UMass. Research is more reserved for students who are STEM focused, with little collaboration in regards to entrepreneurship. Moreover, there are few industry mentor networks, and the ones out there are not easily accessible to students. In this way, the university could do a much better job facilitating university-industry collaboration.

Finally, the UMass Amherst ecosystem is also lacking in the way it engages with regional and local economic development efforts. Upon researching, we found that there is a committee that deals with economic development, but it is unclear what their goals are or what they actually do. The website simply stated names of who was involved, with no mission statement. We believe that most students are unaware of this resource, and more than that, when a student is aware there is little information to be found. The university does not appear to be very committed to research and development for positive local economic benefit, and we believe that would benefit Umass to do a better job.