American Magazine November 2014

news
Kogod’s new Sustainable
Entrepreneurship and
Innovation Initiative’s start-up
incubator is open for business
in the Mary Graydon Center.
The incubator matched five
teams of students and young
alumni with business mentors
and will provide them with
modest seed money to get their
businesses off the ground.
“We’re trying to provide an
environment open to all of AU
where venture ideas can become
a reality,” says management
professor Stevan Holmberg,
director of the initiative.
Once a venture is beyond the
initial conception stage, teams
may apply for seed capital from
the Kogod Entrepreneurship
Venture Fund (EVF). Designed
to be self-sustaining, the Kogod
EVF will be built on donations
and returned contributions from
funded ventures that go on to
achieve commercial success.
A team of successful alumni
entrepreneurs will guide and
advise the budding business
owners.
“This is the perfect format for
today’s students to gain realworld
experience when it comes
to starting a business,” says Mark
Bucher, SPA/BA ’90, founder of
eateries BGR: The Burger Joint
and Medium Rare. “It’s going
to give them a good dose of
reality before they hit the ground
running [after school], and that’s
an amazing gift.”
The School of Communication will launch a program for disruptive
leadership development in media and journalism with $250,000 from
the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
JoLT—Journalism Leadership Transformation—will build on AU’s
new Game Design and Persuasive Play Initiative, a joint program
between SOC and the College of Arts and Sciences that trains students
to apply lessons from game design to influence user interests or opinions.
The JoLT pilot will add a leadership component to the initiative,
recruiting six fellows (three full-time student fellows and three working
media professionals) to participate in activities designed to hone
leadership skills. JoLT will also host a speaker series and workshops.
“This collaboration could not come at a better time in terms of the
transformation of journalism, the explosion of interest in game design
thinking, and the creative research behind disruptive leadership,”
says SOC dean Jeffrey Rutenbeck. “As the complexity and pace of
contemporary media and social transformation skyrocket, the worlds
of journalism and media are sorely in need of transformational leaders
who can lead, push, reorganize, and restart efforts to inform and engage.”
RISING FROM THE RANKS
AU landed at No. 71—up four spots from last year—on
U.S. News and World Report’s 2015 list of top national
universities, released in September. AU has jumped 28 spots,
from No. 99, in the last 11 years. Only three institutions in
the top 100 have risen more during that period.
EVERY DAY IS EARTH DAY
The Sierra Club named AU the second “coolest school” in the country,
up from No. 9 in 2013. The environmental organization called AU a
sustainability “heavyweight,” praising its solar power system (the largest
in DC), student-led adopt-a-tree program, and fleet of 11 electric vehicles,
including one named Sparky.
FOLLOW US @AU_AMERICANMAG 7