Fayetteville State University recently received two grants totaling $164,000 to support entrepreneurial innovation on campus and in the community.

The NCIDEA Black Entrepreneurship Council awarded FSU $150,000 to provide entrepreneurial education and resources to regional entrepreneurs and students through innovative curricula and wraparound services.

The new set of online, adaptive courses, titled I 3 (ideate, innovate, incubate) Commercialization and Sustainable Entrepreneurship are flexible, quick, and low-to no-cost to help students across disciplines and other entrepreneurs secure information, entrepreneurial competencies, and resources to break through barriers to success. The courses will be supported through FSU’s Broadwell College of Business and Economics’ student Entrepreneurship Lab, the Fayetteville-Cumberland Regional Entrepreneur and Business HUB, The FSU Office of Faculty Development, and other community and business partnerships.

“We have a number of students with entrepreneurial aspirations who are not necessarily business majors,” explained Caroline Glackin, Ph.D., FSU director of innovation, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment, and principal investigator of the grant, in a press release. “However, their comprehensive majors don’t have sufficient free electives to pursue entrepreneurship. The I 3 courses are a more flexible and low-cost way to get the information they need. At the same time, flexible, adaptive just-in-time training resources and certifications will support aspiring and established entrepreneurs throughout the region.”

Glackin and a team of faculty in chemistry, biological sciences and astronomy also received a $14,000 VentureWell Course and Program Grant. 

The new STEM innovation and commercialization program supported through this seed grant will create faculty-led, interdisciplinary student teams to develop commercialization strategies for sustainability, healthcare or chemical products and services that solve challenges facing underserved communities.

“FSU’s Broadwell College of Business and Economics is committed to supporting and guiding the creativity and ingenuity of burgeoning entrepreneurs across campus and in our community,” said BCBE Dean Ulysses Taylor, J.D. in a press release. “The I 3 courses Dr. Glackin and her colleagues — Drs. Claudette Fuller, Tamara Bryant, Badisha Bose-Basu, Jonathan Breitzer, Kristen Delany-Nguyen, and Mr. Joseph Kabbes — are developing will expand and foster entrepreneurship education that will help turn ideas into action.”