Engineering Entrepreneurship
More information on how to participate in Engineering Entrepreneurship at IIT will be available soon. Please contact Mark Snyder with questions.
The Kern Family Foundation
The Kern Family Foundation is a private, independent grantmaking foundation based in Waukesha, Wis. In practice, the Foundation seeks to target funding toward broad impact, long-term programs. The Foundation created the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) in 2005 as a collegiate initiative to increase the quantity and quality of US engineering talent.
KEEN’s mission is to create an action-oriented, entrepreneurial mindset among engineering, science and technical undergraduates. KEEN is a collaboration of 20 universities around the U.S. that strive to instill an entrepreneurial mindset in undergraduate engineering and technology students. Their mission is to graduate engineers who will contribute to business success; and in doing so, transform the American workforce.
Values characteristic of the entrepreneurial mindset include vision, passion, creativity, innovation, optimism, opportunity recognition, and persistence. This program is built on the conviction that engineering students will make greater contributions to business success if their engineering education includes an effectively integrated entrepreneurship education program. Graduates of KEEN schools will be prepared to identify new business opportunities that are based upon technology, especially new technology. Organizing a network of colleges such as KEEN creates synergy between member institutions that takes advantage of the network’s collective student body in a manner that transcends an individual university’s status.
The Engineering Entrepreneurship Program at IIT is pleased to be part of the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network and offers its sincere gratitude and appreciation to the Kern Family Foundation for its generous support. For more information, please visit the KEEN website.