Academic entrepreneurship, in its narrowest sense, involves the creation of new business ventures by university and college faculty, administrators, and students. More broadly, academic entrepreneurship seeks to establish connections across disciplines, between student and academic affairs, and between the campus and community. It draws on the spirit of innovation, creativity, and opportunity that animates entrepreneurial activity in the business world to provide the richest learning experience possible for students

Ithaca College

Academic entrepreneurship has been part of Ithaca College’s institutional DNA since its founding in 1892 as a music conservatory. Ithaca, an independent, predominantly undergraduate college of 6,400 students in the Finger Lakes region of New York, offers a diverse curriculum in more than 100 degree programs in business, communications, health sciences and human performance, humanities and sciences, music, and interdisciplinary studies.  The music program’s original emphasis on performance and hands-on learning spread throughout the curriculum as the college grew and influenced other programs in theater arts, physical education, physical therapy, radio, and television.

As a founding member of Associated New American Colleges (ANAC), a national consortium of about twenty small and mid-sized institutions, Ithaca is committed to Ernest Boyer’s vision of undergraduate education, one that combines liberal and professional learning with a strong emphasis on experiential learning and civic engagement. This marriage of pragmatism and idealism equips Ithaca students with the ability to solve real world problems in ways that advance the college’s core values: intellect, character, creativity, community, and global citizenship. The recent campus-wide sustainability initiative is but the latest manifestation of Ithaca’s distinctive brand of undergraduate education.

Ithaca College has been exploring and applying the concept of sustainability for several years. Our sustainability initiative involves three dimensions: 1) the curriculum, 2) college operations, and 3) community outreach. The framework supplied by sustainability thinking—with its emphasis on interconnectedness, the dynamic nature of complex systems, and the importance of taking the long view—has much in common with the strategic approach adopted by the college’s institutional plan. Indeed, the move towards sustainability has emerged organically out of the priorities established by the institutional plan.

Sustainability thinking and entrepreneurship, then, have become inextricably linked at Ithaca College. The institution’s long history of innovation and pragmatism has furnished a fertile seedbed for the growth of the sustainability initiative, which in turn has helped to facilitate the integration of a liberal education and professional studies, with a strong emphasis on civic engagement. As a result, Ithaca is helping to forge a unique approach to undergraduate learning, an approach that represents the cutting edge of U.S. higher education in the twenty-first century.

Note: This is an abridged version of an essay that first appeared as “Sustainability Thinking and Entrepreneurship: A Case Study,” Peer Review, Vol. 7, no. 3 (Spring 2005): 18-20.