SU names 16 Kauffman Fellows

SYRACUSE — The Syracuse University (SU) Kauffman Entrepreneurship Engagement Fellows program has continued growing since its beginning three years ago.

This year’s group totals 16 students, up from 10 a year earlier and just two in the program’s first year in 2009-2010. The students receive one year of tuition at the university and make a commitment to stay in Central New York and start some sort of entrepreneurial venture.

Some end up growing companies here and providing real jobs, says Bruce Kingma, SU associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation. Others use the experience as a springboard to local employment elsewhere.

The overall goal is to help some of SU’s best students grow roots in Central New York, Kingma says.

“This is helping,” he says. “We’re putting people in Syracuse that have offers elsewhere.”

The four fellows from the effort’s first two years all still live in Syracuse. The first group included a co-founder of BrandYourself.com, which recently attracted $1.2 million in investment and won the $200,000 grand prize in the 2011 Creative Core Emerging Business Competition.

The idea that entrepreneurship can be a valid path is catching on among students at SU, Kingma adds. It can provide a route to a living based around a passion or provide unique experience when applying for jobs at other companies.

The lackluster employment market is probably a contributing factor to the trend, but not the sole explanation, Kingma says.

“When you’re really engaged with experiential entrepreneurship, you simply find it more exciting,” he says.

Students often spend their entire college careers working on entrepreneurial projects, Kingma says, thanks to a combination of classes and programs like the Raymond von Dran Innovation and Disruptive Entrepreneurship Accelerator (IDEA), which aims to spark more student ventures. That leaves many of them with a desire to continue that work into a fifth year.

Kingma also notes that being an entrepreneur and working for another company aren’t mutually exclusive. Students often combine both successfully, he says.

This year’s fellows are working on projects including The Palette, an e-commerce site and mobile shop where SU students can promote and sell their art work, and Performance Driving School, which aims to teach proper driving rules, skills, and techniques combined with car-performance basics, according to SU. Other projects include Waterport, which is developing a portable and self-sustained rainwater-harvesting system to turn rain into drinking water in impoverished villages, and SocialU 101, a platform to help older individuals with social media.

The Engagement Fellows program was launched in 2009 by Imagining America, a national consortium of more than 80 colleges, and Enitiative, an SU-led project to spark more entrepreneurship and innovation in Central New York.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation supports the fellows program and funded the launch of Enitiative in 2007 with a 

$3 million grant.      

SYRACUSE — The Syracuse University (SU) Kauffman Entrepreneurship Engagement Fellows program has continued growing since its beginning three years ago.

This year’s group totals 16 students, up from 10 a year earlier and just two in the program’s first year in 2009-2010. The students receive one year of tuition at the university and make a commitment to stay in Central New York and start some sort of entrepreneurial venture.

Some end up growing companies here and providing real jobs, says Bruce Kingma, SU associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation. Others use the experience as a springboard to local employment elsewhere.

The overall goal is to help some of SU’s best students grow roots in Central New York, Kingma says.

“This is helping,” he says. “We’re putting people in Syracuse that have offers elsewhere.”

The four fellows from the effort’s first two years all still live in Syracuse. The first group included a co-founder of BrandYourself.com, which recently attracted $1.2 million in investment and won the $200,000 grand prize in the 2011 Creative Core Emerging Business Competition.

The idea that entrepreneurship can be a valid path is catching on among students at SU, Kingma adds. It can provide a route to a living based around a passion or provide unique experience when applying for jobs at other companies.

The lackluster employment market is probably a contributing factor to the trend, but not the sole explanation, Kingma says.

“When you’re really engaged with experiential entrepreneurship, you simply find it more exciting,” he says.

Students often spend their entire college careers working on entrepreneurial projects, Kingma says, thanks to a combination of classes and programs like the Raymond von Dran Innovation and Disruptive Entrepreneurship Accelerator (IDEA), which aims to spark more student ventures. That leaves many of them with a desire to continue that work into a fifth year.

Kingma also notes that being an entrepreneur and working for another company aren’t mutually exclusive. Students often combine both successfully, he says.

This year’s fellows are working on projects including The Palette, an e-commerce site and mobile shop where SU students can promote and sell their art work, and Performance Driving School, which aims to teach proper driving rules, skills, and techniques combined with car-performance basics, according to SU. Other projects include Waterport, which is developing a portable and self-sustained rainwater-harvesting system to turn rain into drinking water in impoverished villages, and SocialU 101, a platform to help older individuals with social media.

The Engagement Fellows program was launched in 2009 by Imagining America, a national consortium of more than 80 colleges, and Enitiative, an SU-led project to spark more entrepreneurship and innovation in Central New York.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation supports the fellows program and funded the launch of Enitiative in 2007 with a 

$3 million grant.