SYRACUSE — Working on a college campus has been a longtime ambition for Terry Brown, the new executive director at the Syracuse University (SU) Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship.

While he was CEO of the engineering firm O’Brien & Gere, Brown says he developed close relationships with a number of university leaders in the region. And, he says he has maintained close ties to his alma mater, Clarkson University in Potsdam, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in civil and environmental engineering.

The ties have shown him firsthand the economic value of the Central New York region’s educational institutions.

“As a region, we have just a tremendous asset in the college students that come here,” he says. “How do we retain them and that talent to help drive our economy?”

The Falcone Center is an ideal place to help answer that question, Brown says. The center is the outreach arm of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises at SU’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management.

It aims to foster entrepreneurial activity on campus, and in the local and regional community.

Brown will oversee and develop the Falcone Center’s strategic plan, manage its budget and development initiatives, advise student entrepreneurs, and work to strategically develop the entrepreneurial community both on and off campus, according to SU.

Brown started his new position in May. He was with O’Brien & Gere from 1975 to 2011 and held various senior-level positions in addition to chairman, president, and CEO. He was most recently president and CEO at Warner Energy Solutions, LLC, a startup focused on renewable energy and environmental projects.

At the Falcone Center, Brown succeeds Thomas Kruczek, who is now dean of the College of Business and Management at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.

Connecting the community and the university around entrepreneurial activity is a focus for the Falcone Center, Brown notes. That means getting students into internships and working on projects for local companies, but also bringing businesses to campus to take advantage of SU’s resources.

Brown says his motives are at least partially personal. He wants his children and grandchildren to see the same opportunities in the Central New York region that he did while growing up here.

“If we’re going to retain our talent and have opportunities for our children and grandchildren, we have to create a robust economy,” he says. “Syracuse has a lot to offer.”

Efforts like the Syracuse Technology Garden, SU’s Student Sandbox business startup program, the Syracuse Center of Excellence, and the Central New York Biotech Accelerator can make big contributions in the years ahead, Brown adds.

“There’s a lot of entrepreneurship programs going on,” he says. “They all have to be linked together. We all have to be talking as one.”

Already, Brown says he’s been impressed by the passion and enthusiasm of students for entrepreneurship. Even though it’s summer, he says he’s already been approached by a handful of students with ideas and well-written business plans.

He hopes to use his connections in the business community to find solid mentors for any students with ambitions to start companies. The Falcone Center, Brown says, can help ensure that the ideas are relevant to the marketplace and have a reasonable chance of succeeding.

“I think that’s a huge thing we can bring to the students,” he says.