Cementing its status as a leader in innovation and enterprise, Flinders University has forged an alliance with the prestigious US-based Fox School of Business.
Flinders University Vice-Chancellor Professor Colin Stirling is proud to unveil a new suite of course offerings powered by the Fox School of Business, a US top ten business school for entrepreneurship*.
Professor Stirling has travelled to Temple University in Philadelphia to sign the three-year partnership agreement with Temple University President Dick Englert.
“This strategic partnership will significantly boost Flinders’ capacity and reputation in the enterprise space, with our highly regarded New Venture Institute driving this initiative,” Professor Stirling says.
“All of Flinders 26,000 students will have the chance to add Innovation and Enterprise topic modules to their suite of learning, and will be exposed to entrepreneurship whatever they’re studying, strengthening Flinders’ contribution to South Australia’s economic transformation,” Professor Stirling says.
“At Flinders University, we recognise that careers are evolving and the workplace of the future will look very different to today’s. Around 70 per cent of young graduates will start their careers in roles which will substantially change or be obsolete in the next 10 to 15 years.
“We are constantly fine-tuning our degrees and evolving our course offerings to ensure our students are prepared not just for their first job but for a lifetime of careers, and that means equipping them with the innovation and problem solving skills as well as a capacity for entrepreneurial action to thrive in this disruptive era.
“Partnering with Fox School of Business means Flinders students will gain the core skills to enhance creativity, embrace innovation and think like an entrepreneur on a global scale, emerging with the ‘personal enterprise’ skills they’ll need for the five career changes and 17 different jobs they’re likely to have over a lifetime,” Professor Stirling says.
Students will have the opportunity to turbocharge their careers by majoring in this exciting new field with Flinders’ new Bachelor of Business (Innovation and Enterprise).
Flinders also offers the opportunity to embed innovation and enterprise topics within all its bachelor degrees, delivering a dynamic new learning experience that will empower students to ‘think big’.
The Bachelor of Letters (Innovation and Enterprise) can be undertaken with any existing undergraduate degree, as a fourth-year stand-alone course, and as an online undergraduate course.
The Dean of Temple’s Fox School of Business, Dr M. Moshe Porat, says Fox is proud to enter this partnership with Flinders University.
“There are a number of similarities between students at Flinders and Temple – two universities that have stimulated innovation and promoted entrepreneurship for decades.
“This partnership enables the Fox School to employ our expertise to power the Personal Enterprise Journey of Flinders students more than halfway around the world.”
As part of the agreement, the Fox School will provide RoadmapTM, Fox’s revolutionary higher-education platform that assembles all feedback and assessments to demonstrate personal development and return on investment to students.
Roadmap will be customised to track the development of those personal enterprise behaviours, or competencies, that have been identified by business and society as valuable in the Australian context.
Flinders New Venture Institute (NVI) Director, Matt Salier, says innovation and creativity – those characteristics that underpin entrepreneurial thinking – are a critical part of the picture for all industries as we see increasing disruption to service models and product offerings.
“Next time someone asks a Flinders student what job they’d like, their challenge will be to reframe the question and consider instead ‘What problem would you like to solve?’ ” Mr Salier says.
“Our partnership with the Fox School of Business brings the best in global education methods and content to help our students answer this question.”
He says the NVI is open to any student at Flinders with an idea or goal to be able to make change because we understand that some of the best ideas come from the most unlikely places.
“We want to empower people to go out and start their own business, or transform an existing business, giving them the skills and knowledge to start down that road, and alliance with Fox will better equip them for that journey,” Mr Salier said.
In conjunction with Flinders New Venture Institute, students will receive mentorship from leading entrepreneurs, work with innovative businesses, and develop their own ideas. Graduates will receive a qualification from Flinders along with certification from the Fox School of Business.
The new offerings will be available to students in semester 1, 2017.
About the Fox School of Business
Established in 1918 as part of Temple University, the Fox School of Business has a distinguished tradition of preparing business leaders, professionals, and entrepreneurs for successful careers. Today, it is among the largest, most comprehensive business schools in the world.
In November 2015, Fox’s undergraduate- and graduate-level Entrepreneurship programs earned top-10 rankings from The Princeton Review and Entrepreneurship magazine.
Innovation, entrepreneurial thinking, experiential learning opportunities, and influential research are Fox hallmarks, as it aims to create and disseminate knowledge which transforms students in order to face local, national and global challenges.
The Fox School of Business’s mission includes engaging in pioneering research to advance knowledge and to develop scholars through rigorous academic and practice-oriented doctoral education, as well as linking education, research and outreach efforts to the driving forces of our economy – information technology, globalisation, innovation, entrepreneurship, ethics – to provide high-quality education and student services in traditional and digital learning environments
The Fox School of Business is committed to providing a student-centred education and professional development relevant to today’s digital, global economy. That commitment is reflected in the integration of technology into the curriculum and classroom, and in the encouragement of entrepreneurship and innovation in business and education.
Flinders New Venture Institute
The New Venture Institute is the centre of innovation and entrepreneurship at Flinders University.
Its programs and activities inspire, connect and educate future generations of entrepreneurs and innovators. By linking business, government and the community sector to all the university has to offer, Flinders NVI showcases the R&D innovations of the future and ensures robust industry–university linkages.
More than 270 business executives have been involved in guiding well over 1400 students through the NVI’s programs since 2013, resulting in more than 140 start-ups.
Alongside the start-up creation programs, NVI connects students to businesses as a core component of their education. Working in small consulting teams, students address business challenges that are client driven, delivering solutions to drive business growth.
*The Princeton Review 2016