Graduate Course on Intellectual Entrepreneurship

In addition to being an internationally known researcher on aesthetic education and qualitative research methods, my friend, Prof. Liora Bresler, is working on intellectual entrepreneurship.

She's teaching a graduate course this spring on this new area. Read below for more information:

Spring 2009
C & I 507/590

Academic Intellectual Entrepreneurship: Vision, Team Leading, and Creativity
Tuesdays, 11-1
Liora Bresler, Instructor


The overall goal of the course is to develop an entrepreneurial perspective of the role of faculty in academia. The three components of the academic endeavor--research, teaching, and service--will be conceptualized as highly entrepreneurial activities.

Building on their individual passions and strengths, the course will empower students (prospective faculty) to experience each of these three components of academia along the three entrepreneurial axes: recognize opportunities, acquire resources, and create a new entity of value. Specifically, the course will address the following: 1. Expansion of contents, forms, and audiences in teaching; 2. Choosing research questions for significance and impact, garnering means for effective execution, and creating avenues to bring the fruits of research to society; and 3. Refocusing of academic service as a vehicle for the building and nurturing of intellectual community.

The course will have three major components: 1. Theoretical foundations of the field of entrepreneurship with a slant toward inter-disciplinary environment, creativity, and intellectual entrepreneurship; 2. Case studies of successful entrepreneurs in academia; 3. Individual student capstone projects of developing an “academic entrepreneurial plan”. This course is seen as a part of the education of doctoral students, in preparing them to be resourceful, dynamic faculty, responsive to the needs and opportunities in the field, drawing on their visions, creativity, and skills, to create new endeavors.

* for more information about the course, contact Liora Bresler at liora@uiuc.edu