Washington University in St. Louis has received a gift of $2,325,000 from Robert and Julie Skandalaris, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton has announced. This is the third major gift from the Skandalarises for the support of the University’s growing entrepreneurial programs. Two million dollars will be contributed to the endowment for the newly established Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies (SCES); the remainder will be used to support the Center for Research on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a faculty-based research program with a mission to generate quality research on targeted topics in the area of entrepreneurship.
“Bob and Julie Skandalaris have given Washington University the resources to make entrepreneurial education a strong and significant program for all students. This is a unique and much-needed component of the curriculum, and I am very grateful to them for their extraordinary support,” Wrighton said.
Bob Skandalaris is the chairman of Noble International, Ltd., a company he founded in 1994, and Quantum Value Partners, LLC, an entity that invests its resources to help develop and grow middle market businesses. Noble is one of the world’s leading providers of laser-welded steel blanks in service of the automotive industry. Julie Skandalaris is an active community member who volunteers with organizations such as the Red Cross and the Detroit Country Day School. She serves on the Visitors Board at Duke University.
No one is more aware of the impact of their gifts that Stuart I. Greenbaum, Ph.D., Bank of America Professor of Managerial Leadership and dean of the John M. Olin School of Business. “The Skandalaris family’s generosity has transformed the study, teaching and practice of entrepreneurship at Washington University and this most recent gift will spread the entrepreneurial culture to virtually every venue at our University,” Greenbaum noted.
Nearly five years ago, the Skandalarises gave the Olin School of Business $1 million to name the Hatchery Seed Capital Fund to enhance Olin’s ability to provide funding for Olin students attempting to start their own businesses after graduation. A year later, an additional $2 million gift established the Skandalaris Entrepreneurship Program. This gift enabled the Olin School to add a complete set of traditional courses in tandem with simulated and real-world learning programs like the Hatchery thereby establishing Olin as a leader in entrepreneurial education.
With these programs firmly in place, Washington University was poised to take the next step: making entrepreneurship education accessible to faculty and students campus-wide. In Dec., 2003, the University was awarded a $3 million grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation expressly for that purpose. The Kauffman Campuses Initiative for Entrepreneurship Education at Washington University, as the plan is known, is a direct outgrowth of initiatives made possible at the Olin School by the Skandalaris gifts. In addition, the expansion of the Skandalaris Center has been further supported by a Kauffman Foundation award of $675,000 for academic research in the area of entrepreneurship.
“The Skandalarises’ gifts over the past five years had a direct impact on achieving our hope of expanding entrepreneurship throughout the schools,” Wrighton noted. “Their investment in Washington University demonstrated to the Kauffman Foundation our commitment to become a leader in this important field.”
Some of the components of the Kauffman Campuses Initiative include creating entrepreneurship courses to fit with the curriculum of other schools on campus, expanding internship opportunities, opening two clinics to provide specialized services to entrepreneurial projects, establishing an endowed professorship to accelerate research in the field, and increasing student-run businesses on campus.
The SCES’s managing director, Ken Harrington, will head a new campus-wide steering committee coordinating the Kauffman Campuses Initiative at Washington University.
The Skandalaris gift will count towards the $14 million challenge associated with the Kauffman Foundation grant. “Bob and Julie’s recent gift will serve as a powerful catalyst for securing the funds needed to meet this challenge,” Wrighton said.