Drexel University will open an entrepreneurship school this fall with a $12.5 million fund from the Charles and Barbara Close Foundation.
The school will be named Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship. Charles D. Close was a 1936 Drexel graduate in engineering.
The new school will be the 14th school or college on the campus. Dr. Donna DeCarolis will be its first dean.
It will offer joint degree programs in entrepreneurship and other programs across the university.
Programs such as 'Entrepreneurship Living-Learning Community,' 'Entrepreneurship Co-ops,' and 'Launch It' will be incorporated.
The school's faculty will comprise of two successful entrepreneurs and teachers from other disciplines across the university.
The enrolments for the school will begin from spring 2014.
President John A. Fry told Philly that the School of Entrepreneurship will help students start and develop their own businesses and get paid for it.
The school will also help the university increase its enrolments to 34,000 by 2021 from its current 25,000 students.
The school will comprise of the Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship, Drexel's business incubator, a social entrepreneurship center and a center focusing on promoting faculty innovations in the market.
This start-up coincides with the universities' plan to create an 'innovation neighborhood', which will contain five million square feet of commercial office space, research laboratories, student housing, and a hotel.
Fry said that this will help student entrepreneurs, faculty, alumni and regional entrepreneurs to start new ventures in the neighborhood with seed funding and settle down in the state itself.
DeCarolis is a management professor in the university's LeBow College of Business, an associate vice provost for entrepreneurship education and associate dean of graduate studies.
She was a successful entrepreneur before coming to Drexel 16 years ago.
