Michael Gross named faculty director for the Center for Entrepreneurship
Michael Gross, a founding faculty member and associate professor of the undergraduate Department of Engineering, has been named the David and Leila Farr Faculty Director for the Wake Forest University Center for Entrepreneurship. 
“We are thrilled and know he will do a wonderful job in this important role,” said Dan Cohen, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship.
As faculty director, Gross seeks to build relationships across departments and programs to creatively think about what it means to be entrepreneurial broadly and how to achieve the Wake Forest motto of Pro Humanitate with an entrepreneurial mindset.
“Working together with people across the college to reimagine the undergraduate engineering educational experience, approaching engineering as a liberal art, and striving to embody the motto of Pro Humanitate has been such a rewarding experience and an exemplar to the engineering education community,” said Gross. “It is such an exciting opportunity to engage with students and colleagues in analogous work for Entrepreneurship.”
Categories: Faculty News, Inside WFU, Staff News
Faculty books 2020: A year in review
The following is the 2020 annual Wake Forest University faculty book publication report.
January 2020
Anover, Véronique, & Rémi Fournier Lanzoni. (Spanish & Italian). On tourne! French Language and Culture through Film. Georgetown University Press. 2020.
Gengler, Amanda. (Sociology). Save My Kid: How Families of Critically Ill Children Cope, Hope, and Negotiate an Unequal Healthcare System. New York University Press. 2020.
February 2020
Gellar-Goad, T. H. M. (Classics). Laughing Atoms, Laughing Matter: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and Satire. University of Michigan Press. 2020.
Virgil, Steven M. (Law). A Handbook for Transactional and Small Business Clinics. Carolina Academic Press. 2019.
Wood, John H. (Economics). Who Governs?: Legislatures, Bureaucracies, or Markets?. Palgrave Macmillan. 2020.
Categories: Faculty News, Inside WFU
Center for Entrepreneurship director Dan Cohen named 'Master Educator'
Dan Cohen, executive director of Wake Forest’s Center for Entrepreneurship, has been named a Master Educator by the Annals 
of Entrepreneurship Education & Pedagogy. Only five professors are selected worldwide for this honor. As part of the Master Educator recognition, Cohen will write for the 2021 annals to share what he has learned over a decade of teaching entrepreneurship, with a focus on the IDEATE method of identifying problems and seeing potential solutions to solve them.
Cohen developed the IDEATE method to help fledgling entrepreneurs develop higher-quality, more innovative ideas that improve the odds their startup will succeed. When subjected to randomized testing, the IDEATE method was shown to produce ideas that were significantly more innovative than the previous gold standard in teaching ideation in collegiate entrepreneurship programs.
In addition to national recognition, Dan Cohen and the entrepreneurship center were prominently featured in the Winston-Salem Journal’s Business & Innovation section Spotting valuable ideas.
A number of Wake Forest startups are getting traction at Winston Starts, a local startup incubator, including Swipeby, Storage Scholars, and UpDog Kombucha. The most recent Wake Forest Startup Lab saw five startups raise external seed capital.
Visit the Center for Entrepreneurship for more on Dan Cohen and Wake Forest News to read about the IDEATE method.
Categories: Faculty News, Inside WFU, Staff News
WFU student entrepreneurs are choosing Winston-Salem for startups
Last year, Wake Forest University joined leaders from five other local colleges and universities in pledging to incentivize entrepreneurship among their students and keep the best and brightest young business minds in Winston-Salem.
Inmar’s chairman and CEO David Mounts envisioned this collaborative program and announced its launch during a press conference at the inaugural meeting of Venture Café Winston-Salem in May 2017.
At Wake Forest, the Center for Entrepreneurship is at the forefront of fulfilling this commitment. The University has awarded more than $75,000 in cash and in-kind services to startups during the 2017-18 academic year. Student entrepreneurs with a high potential for success have access to local industry experts with technical, legal and business know-how.
The Venture Café Winston-Salem, Winston Starts and the Winston Salem Chamber of Commerce, in addition to committed individual business and community leaders, are inspiring college entrepreneurs to launch and build their businesses in Winston-Salem.
Categories: Inside WFU
Centers and Institutes Leadership Updates
For nearly 10 years, Wake Forest University’s Centers and Institutes have added greatly to the scholarly and creative life of campus, helping enhance both the impact and visibility of faculty engagement across disciplines. Wake Forest salutes and congratulates the faculty and staff who currently serve in, or have recently concluded, directorships and related leadership roles:
- A new Center is in its planning-grant year, the Center for Functional Materials. Timo Thonhauser and Oana Jurchescu, both of our Department of Physics, serve as Co-planning Directors. The Center aims to bring together faculty from physics, chemistry, engineering and medicine to explore organic electronics, metal-organic framework materials and other next-generation materials.
- Marianne Magjuka became the Executive Director of the Pro Humanitate Institute in September. Wake Forest thanks Melissa Harris-Perry, who previously served as the Executive Director and whose term as Faculty Director concluded at the end of the fall semester, for her three-year tenure at the helm of PHI and her ongoing direction of the Anna Julia Cooper Center.
- Recently, Dan Cohen was named John C. Whitaker, Jr. Executive Director of the Center for Innovation, Creativity & Entrepreneurship (ICE), with Paul Pauca taking the helm as ICE Faculty Director. University leaders extend their gratitude to Polly Black, outgoing director, and Bill Conner, who, until recently, served as Faculty Director since ICE’s inception.
Categories: Faculty News, Inside WFU
