Final Enitiative grants focus on sustainable projects

Enitiative (the Syracuse Campus-Community Entrepreneurship Initiative) has awarded sustainability grants to six projects that connect campus and community through entrepreneurship. Funding for the projects is part of a $3 million, five-year grant awarded to Syracuse University by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo. The foundation’s vision is to foster a society of economically independent individuals who are engaged citizens, contributing to the improvement of their communities.

This is the fourth and final round of grants for Enitiative. Since its inception three years ago, Enitiative has seeded more than 160 projects in Central New York. “The Kauffman grant has allowed us to take entrepreneurial education in new directions,” says Bruce Kingma, associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation at SU. “Enitiative has not only seeded great projects that are stimulating entrepreneurship on campuses and in Central New York, it has seeded student ventures. Students are turning their entrepreneurship education into entrepreneurship experience, starting right here in Syracuse.”

Projects being funded include:

• Michael Kelleher, adjunct associate professor, and Tim Volk, research associate, both at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will work with SUNY-ESF and SU students to examine the feasibility of expanding the SUNY-ESF/SU Green Energy Cooperative to form a business that produces solid and liquid biofuel.
• Renee Downey Hart, visiting professor in the Department of Management at Le Moyne College, will build upon Le Moyne’s work with the nonprofit community and undertake a venture to support social entrepreneurship in Central New York.
• The Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College will create a Green Business Standards Certification Program to provide consistency and legitimacy to the use of the term “green business” across business sectors, as well as a recognizable brand at a regional level. In addition, Linda Herbert, instructor in the electronic media communications department at OCC, will work with educators from the Syracuse Alternative Media Network and the Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union to produce a video DVD on financial literacy for at-risk youth.
• Cayuga Community College will identify the college’s successful student-run enterprise models to ensure that the enterprises become self-sustaining, including adding a coordinator position that will implement structure and encourage new ventures.
• Morrisville State College will offer Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management program courses at the Syracuse Technology Garden. Morrisville will also offer a series of noncredit training sessions that will address the needs of would-be entrepreneurs for whom the significant investment in a credit B.B.A. program is not a viable option.
• The Syracuse University College of Law’s Community Development Law Clinic, which works in low income communities throughout Syracuse, Onondaga County and Central New York, will continue to expand its services to include intellectual property legal services, which are usually only available to relatively well-financed start-up companies.

Descriptions of all Enitiative projects can be viewed on the Enitiative website . For more information about Enitiative, contact the ExCEL Center at SU at 315-443-7086 or excel@syr.edu.