REI

Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University

Ryerson University has the largest business program in Canada with over 7,000 full-time undergraduates majoring in the B.Comm degree program at the Ted Rogers School of Management. It has one of the largest entrepreneurship departments in Canada with both a major and minor degree program, over a dozen full-time faculty members, and up to 500 students from other degree programs taking entrepreneurship courses. Two MBAs are offered by the Ted Rogers School of Management.

As Ryerson has a traditional focus on applied education, there is a wide array of innovative degree programs throughout the university with novel specializations including fashion, interior design, graphic communications management, image arts, journalism, radio and television, retail management, hospitality and tourism management, disability studies, midwifery, and nutrition and food. Many of the students from these programs go on to start their own companies, work as independent agents under sole proprietorships or start up community programs.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation have thus become an important focus at Ryerson University with the launch of the university-wide Ryerson Entrepreneur Institute (REI) created to help students and alumni start up for-profit businesses, non-profit organizations and community programs.

Positioned in the heart of Canada’s financial capital at 575 Bay Street, The Ted Rogers School of Management is housed in a new state-of-the-art facility designed to foster partnerships between the business leaders of today and the business leaders of tomorrow. We have many exciting efforts underway:

• Entrepreneurship Degree – one of the largest entrepreneurship departments in Canada, confers around 100 Entrepreneurship Major and Minor Bachelors of Commerce Degrees per year. Our students are taught by experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that have started over a dozen companies and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs raise over $2 Billion in financing. Seven of our professors have PhDs and are engaged in entrepreneurial thought leadership and research. Over a dozen different entrepreneurship courses are offered and over 500 non-business students take our courses per year.
  

• Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) Ryerson Team – the National Entrepreneurship Champion SIFE Team is a student-led organization that helps students gain intensive real-world experience while still in university. Each SIFE member has a personal development plan to gain entrepreneurial, leadership and executive experience with running projects and creating positive change at Ryerson and our community. We ran over 24 projects in collaboration with 46 partner organizations last year, impacting over 2,500 students.
  

• Ryerson Entrepreneur Institute (REI) – helps students and alumni bring their enterprising ideas into reality through education, resources, funding, research and outreach. Accessed through the StartMeUp Program, a team of 50 Entrepreneur Ambassadors from throughout the university help spread the word to empower the enterprising spirit at Ryerson.
  

• On-line entrepreneurship learning modules and tools – a number of web 2.0 technology websites: www.StartMeUpRyerson.com and www.CEOFusion.org provide on-line access to a wide array of educational modules and resources from professors, angels, entrepreneurs and CEOs.
  

• Ryerson Angel Network (RAN) – Canada’s first university-based angel group provides early-stage angel venture capital investment for high growth new businesses that come out of the StartMeUp program. Created and funded in collaboration with the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO), NACO provides best practice investment guidance and national syndication management.
  

• $25,000 Slaight Communications Business Plan Competition – the largest student-run business plan competition in Canada has provided access to over $250,000 in financial support to winning and short-listed competitors over the last eight years.
  

• Dobson Micro-Financing Seed Venture Fund – This Venture Fund, created by a grant from the John Dobson Foundation, provides startup loans to entrepreneurship majors involved in the year-long capstone course (ENT 730 and 830) who startup companies during the course. Last year five (5) new going-concern businesses were formed out of this program and Dollface, HUSH and Nature’s Soap were presented Lorne Goldstein entrepreneurship prizes.
  

• ROI2 (Ryerson Opportunity Identification for ROI) – teams of entrepreneurship majors taking the year long experiential capstone course in entrepreneurship (ENT 730 and 830) analyze real-world companies to discover, create and implement new sources of entrepreneurial value. Over the last two years, 80 students have helped 13 companies generate an estimated $10 million in new annual revenues.
  

• Entrepreneurship Research Institute (ERI) – conducts entrepreneurship research and creates and publishes top-tier academic articles.
  

•  Entrepreneurial Practice Review (EPR) – is a double-blind peer review journal targeted to the entrepreneur practitioner instead of the traditional academic audience. The Journal makes top-tier academic research accessible to a mainstream audience with practical best-practice reviews and thought leadership. Utilizing the best of open source and web 2.0 technologies, this innovative journal also provides collaboration and wiki functionality to transform what we think of traditional academic journals.
  

• Ted and Loretta Rogers Research Chair of Entrepreneurship – created by a generous grant by Ted and Loretta Rogers. The current Loretta Rogers Research Chair of Entrepreneurship is Dr. Alan Carsrud.
  

• Ontario Partnership for Innovation and Commercialization (OPIC) – a $2.7 Million consortium of seven universities led by Ryerson University to create an extended technology transfer office. OPIC provides intellectual property commercialization services and a $600,000 Proof of Principle Fund for commercializing research.
  

• Growing Ontario Firms (GOF) – provides coaching to small to medium Ontario firms.