What is the Faculty Entrepreneurial Learning Academy?
The ELA is a fun professional development program designed for strongly motivated faculty who have an interest in understanding the commercialization possibilities for their research, learning, or engagement activities. Most faculty wouldn’t consider themselves entrepreneurs, but many of the skills are similar. As a faculty (entrepreneur): you run your own small group (company), you hire graduate students (employees), you write grants (raise funding), and you need to pitch your ideas to administrators (investors).
The program introduces faculty to the vast resources available throughout the Purdue entrepreneurial ecosystem, provides them with the essential skill sets needed for entrepreneurs and innovators, and offers a venue for extensive networking opportunities. ELA provides faculty fellows with a comprehensive understanding on how to incorporate their entrepreneurial concepts and innovations into commercial opportunities.
Faculty enter ELA with an idea or a technology they want to explore. We spend the academic year teaching business concepts that can be applied to the potential future venture. Each year we get very positive feedback from faculty. A few quotes below:
“The approaches (to market analysis) you taught were very eye opening. I shared them with my students and urged them to include them in every presentation they are going to give or any paper they intend to write. I’m making much more appealing pitches and writing much improved proposals.” - Wenzhuo Wu, Industrial Engineering
“I enjoyed this class and it left a mark on the way I think. I’ve change the philosophy in my research. Nowadays I’m looking at if this will be useful outside of a publication.” - Saeed Mohammadi, Electrical and Computer Engineering
“In the last couple of years, I attended several semester long workshops -- courses on teaching, research, leadership. This class is the most beneficial.” - Li Qiao, Aeronautics and Astronautics
"This class has made me a better scientist, a better communicator of my science, a better presenter and writer, a better teacher." - Georgia Malandraki, Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences