Director, Lundquist Center Entrepreneurship

Position: Director, Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship

Department Summary

Founded in 1989, the Charles H. Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship (LCE) has supported innovative students, faculty, researchers, and programs for over 35 years. The center's mission is to serve as the hub of student-oriented entrepreneurial activity at the University of Oregon. Thus, LCE supports a wide range of curricular programs for the entire UO student body, including an undergraduate concentration and minor in entrepreneurship, as well as a graduate specialization.

In addition, the center supports student clubs and student advising, and it facilitates a number of co-curricular programs and resources such as speaker series, hackathons, pitch competitions and seed-funding opportunities. Together these activities have fostered a number of successful startup ventures and have dramatically enhanced the innovation mindset and skill sets of a wide array students. This has led the center to be ranked in the top 25 in both the Princeton Review and Poets & Quants in recent years.
Although LCE has an explicit cross-campus mission, it is formally housed in the Lundquist College of Business. Lundquist College of Business is one of seven schools housing academic programs on the University of Oregon campus. The college works cooperatively with other UO colleges and schools to prepare students for a broad range of career paths. It is also a major partner for the Knight Campus to Accelerate Scientific Impact providing programming for their faculty and students, and successfully raising large joint gifts.

Position

Summary

The Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship seeks a director with experience leading entrepreneurial endeavors and a passion for supporting entrepreneurship among students, faculty, and the community. The director will be expected to work to refine and execute the center’s strategic objectives including but not limited to:

• Working in collaboration with senior leadership in the Lundquist College of Business and across the UO to identify, build, and manage student-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship resources, programs, and opportunities.
• Managing the center, including the budget, metrics, and personnel.
• Building relationships with a diverse array of stakeholders both internal and external to UO.
• Working with students, particularly in the form of advising.
• Planning and leading programs/events and managing communications associated with the center.

The director will be expected to leverage their own personal experience, as well as the knowledge and experiences of academic and business community partners, to evaluate existing programs and identify new opportunities that will best prepare students to succeed in their endeavors. The director will need to understand the breadth of opportunities and activities within the college and the university and ensure the Lundquist Center is deeply integrated with partners across the university.

Additionally, the director will be engaged in cultivating relationships and demonstrating the impact of the center, which in turn will lead to fundraising opportunities that advance the center's mission and goals.
The director will need to be a skilled connector and translator between faculty, students, and business partners, and will also need to demonstrate a passion for removing barriers to entrepreneurship so that the entire community may benefit. This position is part of a highly collaborative team that includes the Lundquist Dean’s office, several engaged faculty members, and other key stakeholders across campus.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university, AND
• Seven or more years of demonstrated experience that includes:
  • Deep and active engagement with innovation, entrepreneurship, and/or commercialization (i.e., where these activities constituted the majority of the applicant's job);
  • Conceptualizing events, programs and/or resources that align with an organization’s strategic goals, and planning and executing on these events, programs and/or resources;
  • External relations (may include building partnerships, fundraising, managing volunteers, stakeholder engagements, and strategic communications); and
  • Experience advising, mentoring and/or teaching students and/or entrepreneurs.
• Supervision of a team (including but not limited to performance management, professional development growth, and development of performance metrics). OR
• A combination of education and experience (as described above) totaling 11 years.

Professional Competencies

• Entrepreneurial leadership:
  Ability to lead the building and expansion of student-facing entrepreneurial programs and resources. Ability to assess effectiveness of these programs and resources and to adjust accordingly.
• Partnerships:
  Ability to act as a key team player alongside other innovation leadership and faculty at the university. Ability to maintain strong partnerships with on- and off-campus partners to create and execute on programs and initiatives.
• Higher education and entrepreneurship…