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The Wake Forest University Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship program exhibits many characteristics of programs at much larger universities. The resources available, programs conducted, classes offered, faculty advisers, and overall desire to change the Wake Forest campus provides students exciting opportunities. One aspect that I believe differentiates Wake’s program is the multitude of classes offered by the Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (ICE) Program. Entrepreneurship classes range everywhere from empowering high performance teams to equipping entrepreneurial scientist with the necessary skills to start a venture. Students start by taking three core courses to teach them basics of innovation, entrepreneurship, and managing a start-up. The wide variety of courses offered captures student interests from across many disciplines. This is purely evident by the number of Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise minors on campus. The ICE program’s positioning within the university is also an explanation for its ubiquitous nature on the Wake Forest campus. The program is not considered a department, nor is it buried in our undergraduate business school. In fact, it is centrally located on campus with beautiful glass room offices providing a “googlesque” environment.
Furthermore, the ICE program provides remarkable ways to inspire the entire student body with events that call students to action. For example, the [http://tedxwakeforestu.com/TEDxWakeForestU[TEDxWakeForestU]] has become a staple event by the ICE program which has hosted major speakers from the Wake Forest University Regenerative Medicine Primary Investigator, Dr. Anthony Atala to College Humor found Ricky Van Veen. For the past two years, both TEDx conferences have hosted 1000+ people and have brought an inspiring call to action on the Wake Forest campus. Moreover, the ICE program hosts a global entrepreneurship week, Entrepreneurial Speaker Series, and Excellence in Entrepreneurship Banquets.
In a different way, the innovation and entrepreneurship is bolstered on campus through the Seed Grant Proposal projects. Each semester, the ICE program provides students with a four day short series on writing grant proposals. This workshop offers business and non-business students advice on how to successfully write top-notch grant proposals. These students are then able to complete a business plan and submit their ideas to a committee within the ICE program. Students are invited to give 15 minute presentations and can be awarded up to $10,000 for their start-up. This process not only teaches students important entrepreneurial skills such as grant writing, business plan creation, and pitching but also provides them money to move their passion into an action. These points are just a few of the positive aspects I see with Wake Forest University’s Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Program. At the same time, I have identified two sections of WFU’s I&E landscape that need improvement in order to foster higher levels of entrepreneurship on campus.