UNH Entrepreneurship Center Annual Impact Report 2019-2020

A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
“What a long strange trip it has been” is an appropriate quote from Jerry Garcia and the Grateful
Dead to summarize the second half of our academic calendar year ending in June 2020. That
said, if the ECenter can’t adapt to change and solutions to problems then we probably lose
credibility in our ability to help others move their ideas forward. I am thankful for an amazing
ECenter team that includes Heather MacNeill and Allison Bell, as well as a great supporting cast
from UNHInnovation and many of our on and off-campus partners. Like many parts of UNH, the
ECenter quickly jumped into action to provide a seamless, or close to seamless, transition of our
programs due to COVID-19 with minimal, if any, impact on the successful outcomes for students.
Top of that list includes coaching via 50+ hours of Zoom, for the first time, all six of the Holloway
Prize finalists and working hard to have 9 of the 10 in-person student internships at start-ups
happen. The ECenter was one of the few organizations on campus, or on any college campus
in the country, that helped ensure the “in-person” part happened. Being in the trenches with
founders and co-founders (safely) is one of the most impactful of all experiences of the program
and it could have been easy to “go online”—but we didn’t. We also took to heart the national
awareness of inclusiveness and stopped to self-reflect and gain outside perspective from a
range of students and alumni of color who know us well. We were widely applauded for our
openness and embracing of under-served populations, but under the mantra that ‘we can always
be better’, are putting in some new programs this coming year thanks to the advice of so many.
As you will read, our fall saw the induction of the second group of alumni into the Alumni
Entrepreneur Hall of Fame to celebrate amazing accomplishments of innovation and giving
back. On the other end, the ECenter brought in 23 first-year students into the second year
of the Idea + Innovation Society. The Society selects students who have already started
a company, non-profit or been active in innovation in high school. Our speaker series,
bootcamps, and hackathon/ideathons were inspirational, highly attended, and well reviewed.
After 3+ years of full “design-build” fast growth mode of new programs, we were able to pause a
bit, make improvements to our signature programs and only add a few new enhancements like
“ECenter week at CEPS” to create student awareness of programs and resources. Likewise, thanks
to the generous funding by two UNH alumni and ECenter Advisory Board members we brought
on Travis Thompson as Directory of Development through UNH Advancement dedicated to help
the ECenter increase its funding to translate into more and greater #ECenterImpact on students.
Like all start-ups, one of the things I personally love about my work is that no two
days are alike and we never know where the next good student idea or inspiration will
come from. This year we had great success with students from College of Life Sciences
and Agriculture (COLSA) and the Grad School in their pursuit of ideas while on-going
continued ideas and engagement came from students from CEPS, Paul, COLA and CHHS.
Ian Grant
Executive Director
UNH Entrepreneurship Center
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