Elon has received a $385,324 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) to create a learning laboratory for students to apply management and marketing skills through the development of new business enterprises. Elon will match the grant with $334,991 to provide the three-year project with $720,315. Fifty-three percent of the project will be financed with federal funds, while 47 percent is financed by nongovernmental sources.
The grant will fund the creation of the Elon Enterprise Academy (EEA), a center that will provide 60-70 students with real world organizational experience. The EEA will supplement students’ classroom education in the areas of business, leisure and sports management, and music. Students will also participate in a project which will involve the planning, marketing and operation of a major music and cultural festival to be held on the Elon campus in April 2004.
The EEA will link principles from the business curriculum with small entrepreneurial start-up projects, such as the marketing of music CDs, production of publications and planning for major events. Professors will serve as managers and work with students to start new enterprises and supervise existing ones, providing professional and academic guidance.
Barth Strempek, associate professor of business administration in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, will administer the grant. In 1998, Strempek developed the Entrepreneurial Leadership Experience (ELE) at Elon, which teaches students management, marketing and entrepreneurship by developing start-up businesses that produce and market professional quality music CDs.
“The Elon Enterprise Academy is designed to give students a solid start to their careers by making them more capable of surviving, and even thriving, in today’s complex business environment,” Strempek says. “This program will encourage students to recognize opportunity, take initiative, assess risk and reward, take informed chances and follow through.”
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