Alex Stewart, is the current holder of the Coleman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship. This Chair is the result of a very generous gift in 1986 from the foundation.

The Coleman Chair in Entrepreneurship

at Marquette University

The Chair is a magnificent resource, thanks to the generosity of the Coleman Foundation of Chicago.  Here is how I try to use it.

Entrepreneurship Education

My primary purpose is entrepreneurship education, by which the Foundation and I both mean facilitating the development of self-employment by MU students.  Because of the Chair, we have been able to:

• Entice Tim Keane into a full-time role as Entrepreneur-in-residence. Tim does a brilliant job with our MBA students and in directing our Golden Angels Network (GAN).  He is currently leading an exciting thrust to bring entrepreneurship and innovation education to all students across the MU campus.
• Bring Dr. Greg Konz, S.J. to MU for long enough to launch Marquette’s first Major in Entrepreneurship.  Fr. Konz is now an administrator for Regis University in Denver.  The Major is exceeding expectations by its rapid growth.
• Bring Dr. Stephanie Fernhaber to MU as Entrepreneurship Scholar in Residence.  Dr. Fernhaber is an expert in the field of International Entrepreneurship and an MU grad (M.B.A.; her Ph.D. is from Indiana University).
• We have also hired Dr. Asda Chintakananda, who recently completed his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a dissertation on the timing of IPOs.

Educational Philosophy

Entrepreneurship education has an excellent fit with Jesuit universities.  Underlying this fit is the MU core value of Cura Personalis, care for the whole person.  The starting point for a fulfilling entrepreneurial career is self-understanding and reflection.  In our environment at MU, with the students we serve, the alumni and friends who serve as mentors, class guests, and adjunct instructors, this self-understanding inherently incorporates the life of the spirit.  It does not inevitably lead to a concern for social justice and becoming “men and women for others”, but given the culture of MU with many of our students it does.

In the context of entrepreneurship education, Cura Pesonalis has these implications:

• Start with self-understanding (the first Major course, ENTP 150)
• Include all dimensions of the person as relevant
• Treat each student as an individual, which means individual assignments in everything except consulting work.
• Take a coaching approach to try to help each student advance on his or her unique path in life
• Offer opportunities for social activism

Realism is another corollary of Cura Personalis.  We cannot care for the whole person without caring for the actual person.  Similarly, we cannot coach individuals on their career and life trajectories if we do not let them focus on their realistic venture possibilities.  Most entrepreneurship education strongly encourages focusing on so-called “high potential”, high growth ventures.  However, the potential is high only in the abstract because the students in question have not realistic likelihood of following through on the plans they write for their courses.  I prefer modest but real venture plans to ambitious but paper-only plans.  Students dig more deeply into plans they know and care about and they learn more from actual business experiences, however small-scale.

It follows from this that I try to provide tailored value to all students whether they will start with a corporate career, an immediate self-employed career, or a family business career.  MU has quite a few students seriously considering careers in their families’ businesses, and I have worked to provide parallel learning experiences for them.

Community Outreach

We also develop outreach activities, which are also purposes of the Foundation.  We have done this in conjunction with the Kohler Center for Entrepreneurship, which in turn is thanks to the generosity of the Kohler Corporation.

• The Golden Angels Network,
• The annual Business Plan Competition (BPC),
• The annual Master’s Forum (co-sponsored by Ernst & Young, Godfrey and Kahn and the Business Journal)
• And outreach efforts with Milwaukee’s inner city,

Have all been supported by the Chair and by the Center.  The primary stakeholders in these endeavors are MU students, faculty and staff, alumni, and inner city entrepreneurs.  For example, the BPC has had inner city winners.  For three years I also ran an Owner Manager Program for continuing education for inner city entrepreneurs.  Current inner city efforts focus on student consulting projects and a course called Urban Entrepreneurship.

Research and Scholarly Service

Scholarly service and research are lower priorities of the Foundation and hence the Chair, but part of the mandate and a current priority.  The recent additions of Drs. Chintakananda and Fernhaber have brought us scholars with Entrepreneurship, and Dr. June-Young Kim, another recent hire, has related interests.  As Coleman Chair I have served as Chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management and Program Chair and as Co-Convener of the Organization Science Winter Conference.  In April 2008 we will be hosting the fourth annual Family Enterprise Research Conference (FERC), a very international gathering of leading scholars in the field of family business.

As a scholar I am primarily an ethnographer.  I have been doing some work to update my book on ethnographic method (The Ethnographer’s Method; Sage Publications) and expect to finally send for publication an update to an early ethnography (Team Entrepreneurship, also Sage) with a paper I have presented many places.

You are welcome to view the Photo Gallery of Dr. Alex Stewart:

Dean Shrock's Haggerty Gathering

Permission must be granted for any reproduction of the pictures in this Gallery