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Northeast Ohio will see many new businesses
sprout over the next decade thanks to a new program at CWRU.
A successful model for turning physicists into business executives
will expand to CWRU's departments of biology, chemistry, mathematics
and statistics under the new Science Entrepreneurship Program.
Plans are underway to design new curriculums throughout CWRU's
College of Arts and Sciences for the Master of Science in entrepreneurship
degree.
Cyrus Taylor, professor of physics and director
of the new Science Entrepreneurship Program, and Robert Hisrich,
the Mixon Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Studies at Weatherhead
School of Management, launched the Physics Entrepreneurship Program
(PEP) in 2000. PEP was designed to require graduate students not
only to learn theories of physics but also to start their own
companies or find a solution to a problem posed by a company where
the student is engaged in an internship program.
The physics department graduated its first
five entrepreneurs this year. One, Marc Umeno, already has launched
NeoMed, a start-up company to develop and market technology to
detect coronary artery disease, and opened offices in downtown
Cleveland. CrainTech described the company as the talk of the
Cleveland biomedical community.
Taylor said PEP was designed to help the
large number of physics graduates-roughly 15 percent-who leave
college and eventually form their own businesses. Many novice
entrepreneurs say they have struggled to learn the ins and outs
of business through trial and error.
The new graduate program "is all about creative
science getting down to business," Tayjor said. The program has
received support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Coleman
Foundation.
The expanded entrepreneurship program will
arm scientists with skills on how to start businesses, how to
write business plans and launch a product from its conception
to market. Each student will be paired with a department mentor
and a Weatherhead adviser.
The statistics department will be the first
of the departments this year to get its new program operating.
"Statistics is quintessentially an entrepreneurial
discipline," says Wojbor Woyczynski, CWRU chair and professor
of statistics. "Establishing consultancies and software development
companies is a way of life for our alumni. For statistics, it
was a perfect and natural fit to get a running start as soon as
possible."
Up to five students in each department are
expected to enroll in the new two-year program that will require
two additional courses in entrepreneurship from CWRU's management
school to earn the new master's degree.
"This program will reinforce the obvious
entrepreneurial side of statistical professionals. It will also
provide the student with a structured education in the area that
in the past was learned by the seat of their pants," Woyczynski
said.
Biology, chemistry and mathematics will
follow and offer the new graduate program in the fall of 2003
to as many as five students in each department, with the number
of graduate students eventually increasing to 10 students a year.
Samuel Savin, dean of CWRU's College of Arts and Sciences, has
supported the new program by providing some tuition waivers for
entrepreneurial students during the program's formative years.
"This field is one of growing awareness
in the sciences, and we hope to bring visibility to the University
before everyone else starts such programs," said Lawrence Sayre,
chair and professor of chemistry.
James Alexander, chair and professor of
mathematics, sees this program as another avenue for multi-talented
students to employ their mathematical skills. Like biology, chemistry
and physics, the idea for an entrepreneurial graduate program
in math is so new that few students have thought of having such
a program.
"It's hard to rein in my enthusiasm," says
Joseph Koonce, chair and professor of biology. "There are lots
of entrepreneurship programs, but one based in science departments
is virtually unheard of. We are at the cutting edge."
Looking to the future, Koonce hopes to
take some of the entrepreneurial offerings into the undergraduate
program for the Bachelor of Science in computational biology,
which now is being designed.
"This means biology will recruit a new
kind of student. It also creates interesting challenges to incorporate
these students into our graduate program because they will bring
so many different perspectives," Koonce said. "The students may
be very nontraditional from the new bachelor graduate to those
with years of Ph.D. experience."
"We expect the training and education to
provide the students with a solid base for entrepreneurial activities.
We also hope some of these graduates find a home in Northeast
Ohio," Alexander said. "The mathematical areas will likely attract
students into some very viable areas for local entrepreneurial
endeavors."
"There is credible interest among venture
capitalists in the larger community to see this go, and it's a
natural fit with the local economy," Koonce said, noting that
the biology department has a substantial number of people who
have translated research in biology into commercial uses in the
areas of robotics, stem cell research and molecular biology.
"This provides an alternative to the pure
research degree," Koonce said.
For information about the program, visit
http://sep.cwru.edu/.
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