Duke Trustee Kimberly Jenkins will lead a new campus initiative to promote entrepreneurship and enable students to market products beyond the University.
Jenkins, Trinity ’76, Graduate School ’77 and ’80, hopes to transform student ideas into viable businesses and expand Duke’s entrepreneurial network. Building on growing interest in these areas across all sectors of the University, the initiative aims to provide guidance and support to students, faculty and staff interested in pursuing entrepreneurship for both profitable and charitable causes.
Jenkins will serve as senior advisor to the president and provost for innovation and entrepreneurship starting Nov. 1. She has extensive experience in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors; Jenkins worked for Bill Gates during the early stages of Microsoft and for Steve Jobs after he founded the computer company NeXT in addition to founding two nonprofit organizations that informed legislators regarding the significance of technology.
“It’s far more than an initiative, it’s really a vision and a strategy for the University in Durham, regionally and globally,” Jenkins said. “Duke has a robust culture for entrepreneurship and innovation among students and faculty, so my exciting job is going to be trying to work with the team already doing the work to create a more articulate vision for how we can become nationally recognized as a top five in the country institution [for entrepreneurship].”
Undergraduates in entrepreneurship can take courses in the Markets and Management Studies program. In the Spring, the program will offer 37 courses across the University’s departments that focus on different aspects of organization, management and business.
Jenkins said she is open to altering and expanding the Markets and Management curriculum in order to meet increasing student demand. She said she hopes to bring more professors of the practice and “entrepreneurs in residence” in order to the enhance educational offerings and bring real life experience to students.
Beyond the classroom, students pursuing entrepreneurship can utilize other University resources including offices that assist in selling campus research. The new initiative will combine several efforts to shift expertise from Duke’s campus to private business and across society.
“One of the hallmarks of a Duke education is the ability to translate theory into practice,” President Richard Brodhead said in a Duke news release. “Supporting entrepreneurship at Duke is a way of helping students transform creative ideas from the classroom or the lab into real-world applications.”
Although Duke is recognized as a leading research university and one that encourages innovation, Jenkins said it needs to focus on moving campus ventures to the global market and creating new jobs. Jenkins has been visiting universities including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to observe how they promote student ventures and interact with private corporations.
Campuses with strong programs in entrepreneurship have campus cultures that support that sort of activity, Jenkins said. She added that Duke is not starting from scratch and that she is optimistic that the University could soon be “in league with Stanford and MIT.”
Jenkins also emphasized the role that the Duke network can have in fostering an entrepreneurial culture on campus. Many alumni have combined their college education with finance and service skills to start their own ventures, which can serve as tangible models students can relate to, she said.
“I think it’s our alumni and many alumni like me who want to give back because we’ve had such an extraordinary experience being an entrepreneur and we want to give back to the next generation of entrepreneurs,” she said.
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