Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts at Wake Forest University
Director: Dr. Elizabeth Gatewood
gatewoej@wfu.edu
The Wake Forest University Office of Entrepreneurship and Liberal Arts was founded in 2004 to create and sustain an environment that fosters entrepreneurial thinking and action across the entire Wake Forest campus. A grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (See www.kauffman.org) helped launch the Wake Forest program, as part of a Foundation initiative to expand entrepreneurship studies beyond business and engineering colleges. Student interest and enthusiasm has made the minor in Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise the largest in the undergraduate college to date.
The definition of entrepreneurship that we have adopted for the Wake Forest program is that entrepreneurship is the process through which individuals and groups take advantage of their knowledge and resources to identify and pursue opportunities, initiate change and create sustainable value in their lives and the lives of others. The value created can be economic value, as typically envisioned, but can also be social, intellectual, artistic, and scientific value. Faculty and students from every disciplinary area, from anthropology to English, physics to religion, have been involved with the program, adding value to the university’s commitment to a 21st Century interdisciplinary environment for its students and faculty.
