The Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Development at the University of Texas at Arlington understands what it means to be a startup. In his first-floor office in a parking garage, a small staff works on big ideas.
“There’s nothing to knock us down, nothing to hold us back, nothing to dampen our excitement,” said Paul Colson, the center’s executive director. “We turned the bottom floor of the parking lot into a little museum.”
And Colson has transformed his office into a space for innovation for everyone. It’s aimed at business and engineering students, as well as art students taking entrepreneurship classes and elementary through high school students working to refine “big ideas” with local partners. Within this space, UTA faculty and students can plan to license technology at the center or evaluate its patent potential.
That’s just at the campus level. Colson and his team create a personalized medicine innovation district that uses patient characteristics to treat diseases and secure federal grants to create regional semiconductor technology hubs in North Texas and Oklahoma I’m thinking of doing it.
We have a “very wide range of responsibilities, from student gigs to ‘how do we change the local economy?'” Colson said.
The list of programs is long. Since Colson arrived last fall, his office has developed or updated about 34 initiatives. Mr. Colson has experience in this field. Before coming to Arlington, he led the Center for Innovation at the University of Utah and managed the Federal Office for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Washington, DC.
Central to its mission on campus, the center organizes and plans open houses for faculty, staff, students, and the community. And they found willing partners in Arlington’s business community, including a series of workshops on entrepreneurship-related topics with the Arlington Latino Chamber of Commerce and “What’s Your Big” with the Greater Arlington Chamber of Commerce. This led to sponsorship of the “Idea” workshop. .
Our center recognizes the importance of collaboration. This helped lead to the university’s Research and Innovation Expo in April, where participants learned how to find external funding, from federal grants to industry leaders whose businesses need technological advancements. I learned.
The center is considering partnering with local organizations to create local chapters of One Million Cups, a space for entrepreneurs to present about their businesses each week and receive feedback from audience participants.
Colson hopes that with the help of the center’s large and small efforts, the steps to founding a startup will no longer be entirely foreign territory.
“What we’re doing is absolutely terrifying, but there’s great excitement in the confusion and possibility,” Colson said.
Shomial Ahmad is a higher education reporter for The Fort Worth Report. open campus. Contact shomial.ahmad@fortworthreport.org.
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