Outstanding Student Engagement and Leadership Award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers
The Idea Center at the University of Notre Dame earned top honors for student engagement at the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers global conference Oct. 20 in Chicago, winning the Outstanding Student Engagement and Leadership Award.
This award recognizes the entrepreneurship center with the strongest set of programs and initiatives that engage a broad spectrum of students, empower students to lead their own entrepreneurial endeavors and make student leadership in the center’s programs an essential part of its offerings.
The 21-year-old Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers is the leading academic organization where established and emerging university-based centers for entrepreneurship collaborate, share best practices, develop programs and initiatives and help advance entrepreneurship education. It has more than 225 members from universities around the world.
A committee of judges, led by past winners, selected the IDEA Center as the 2018 recipient for this award.
“We’re honored to be recognized for our efforts to engage students as part of the Idea Center’s mission of innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Bryan Ritchie, Notre Dame vice president and associate provost for innovation. “Academic entrepreneurship is vitally important to a research university like Notre Dame, and this award validates our efforts to engage faculty and students in these efforts.”
Other categories honored at the global conference were Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Center, Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation, Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across Disciplines, Excellence in Specialty Entrepreneurship Education, Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovation and the NASDAQ Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence.
The yearly conferences are hosted by member schools. DePaul University and the Illinois Institute of Technology hosted the 2018 Chicago event.
About the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers
The Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers is the premier academic organization addressing the emerging topics of importance to the nation’s university-based centers for entrepreneurship. It has become the vehicle by which the top, established entrepreneurship centers, as well as emerging centers, can work together to share best practices, develop programs and initiatives, and collaborate and assist each other in advancing, strengthening, and celebrating the role of universities in teaching the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
The Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers current membership totals over 225 university-based entrepreneurship centers ranging in age from well-established and nationally ranked to new and emerging centers. Each year a global conference is held on the campus of a Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers member school.
The Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers was established in 1997 for the purpose of becoming the key junction for university-based entrepreneurship centers across the U.S. to collaborate, communicate, and jointly advance excellence in entrepreneurship through the unique role and position of the centers in the academic and business communities.
The consortium is comprised of over 200 member centers, hosts an annual conference, awards program and is home to the 21st Century Entrepreneurship Research Fellow. The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship in the Jones School of Business at Rice University, Houston, has been chosen to be the administrative office for the global consortium.