The ISU Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship recently awarded nearly $200,000 in one-time grants to 26 faculty and staff members from all seven colleges at Iowa State.

Teams from each college submitted proposals explaining how they would use the grants to infuse entrepreneurship within their college. The teams with the most viable proposals were then chosen to receive grants of up to $5,000 each.

Howard VanAuken, professor of finance, served as a liaison to teams from each college who submitted proposals.

“Entrepreneurship education is a hotbed at universities,” VanAuken said. “A lot of the growth in entrepreneurship is happening outside of the College of Business.”

VanAuken said the belief that entrepreneurship is just about creating new businesses is a common misconception.

“Entrepreneurship is all about a set of skills,” he said. “Our initiative is to infuse entrepreneurship across all curriculums at Iowa State.”

Judi Eyles, program coordinator for the ISU Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship, agrees with VanAuken.

“We believe that it is not just business students who will start businesses,” she said.

Eyles said the grants will be used in a number of ways, including helping to develop courses in entrepreneurship and educating faculty on how to teach entrepreneurial skills to their students.

The process of selecting the grant’s recipients “worked out amazingly well,” Eyles said.

“The proposals that were selected showed clear concepts and methods for implementing entrepreneurship into their programs,” she said.

At least three proposals from each college were approved for funding, but no more than five.

Eyles said the proposals selected for funding have sustainability and will impact a large number of people.

Some of the projects the grants will fund include faculty seminars on entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering, a student-run gift shop in the College of Design and the development of a speaker series in the College of Business.

The success of projects funded by the grants should be known in about 18 months, Eyles said.

For students such as Abagail Nurre, sophomore in pre-business, that’s a good amount of time to consider incorporating entrepreneurship into her own education.

Nurre said she is not sure what role entrepreneurship might play in her education, but she does feel the diversity of programs funded by the grants give students a lot of options.

“It’s cool that the grants are for all of the colleges, and not just the College of Business,” she said.

Funding for the grants was made possible by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. According to its Web site, the foundation is interested in improving entrepreneurship education and working to train new educators in the field.