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The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
The Cooper Union is a small college in the East Village of Manhattan that was founded by industrialist and entrepreneur Peter Cooper. The Cooper Union is made up of three schools: The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, The School of Art, and The Albert Nerken School of Engineering. It aims to use intensive study in each of these three majors to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.
Student Led Entrepreneurship
The main organization on campus for student entrepreneurship is create@cooper. This club runs regular events on campus such as guest speakers and short two hour tutorials on how to do something cool as well as the annual hackathon, “hackCooper”. Currently the club is mostly comprised of engineering students (the largest of the three schools that make up Cooper), however the student leadership of the club is reaching out to the other schools to improve their involvement with events such as a Design Hackathon. More information on create@cooper can be found at http://createatcooper.org/.
Institutional Entrepreneurship
Beyond classes that focus on design and innovation, the school has one leading program for entrepreneurship which takes place over the summer. This program, called Invention Factory, pays students to work in teams to create a patentable, novel, and innovative invention. This program started in the summer of 2013 and has since been appended by a program called Entrepreneur Factory which aims to bring these inventions to market. Entrepreneur Factory will be running for the first time in the summer of 2014.
Other Resources and Information
Cooper is rapidly expanding its entrepreneurial efforts. Although the school is small and does not have abundant resources, a strong push is being made to bolster what is available as well as reinforce entrepreneurial education within the required curriculum. For up to date information on Cooper, visit www.cooper.edu.