Ashland University has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation to support entrepreneurial programming in the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Burton D. Morgan Foundation trustees at the September board meeting approved about $1.5 million in grants to promote entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education for youth, college students and adults across Ohio.
The $50,000 grant to AU will support entrepreneurial programming at AU’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurial Studies as well as the development of a core entrepreneurship course.
Dr. Elad Granot, dean of AU’s Dauch College of Business and Economics, expressed gratitude for the grant.
“We are very grateful to the Burton D. Morgan Foundation for this grant. Part of the funding will be used to develop a curriculum for a course on Innovation and Creativity and determine the feasibility of such a course being part of Ashland’s core curriculum,” Granot said.
According to Thomas Sudow, director of Morgan Center, the funding from the Foundation will allow the Morgan Center for Entrepreneurial Studies to expand its speaker series and bring to campus a wide-range of programming, including the annual Burton D. Morgan Lecture.
“It will allow Ashland University students to participate in more entrepreneurial student contests and the Center will be able to offer a Start-up Academy to allow students to learn about and launch their own businesses,” Sudow said. “Since 2008, more than 50 businesses have been established by Ashland students and alumni. The Academy will teach skills to students from across the University to be able to follow their dreams and launch a business.”
The Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurial Studies was established in 2003 as a wing of AU’s Richard E. and Sandra J. Dauch College of Business and Economics. The Center focuses on serving the educational needs of students by actively promoting, encouraging and developing entrepreneurial knowledge through experiential learning. Student programs and curriculum are structured to encourage the development of new ideas into viable products, services and processes that add value to a changing society.
Burton Morgan, who passed away in 2003, established The Burton D. Morgan Foundation in 1967 as a private foundation administered by an independent Board of Trustees. The primary purpose of the Foundation is to strengthen the free enterprise system by investing in organizations and institutions that foster the entrepreneurial spirit.