In April, the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center (CEC) — which serves as an entrepreneurial hub for DePaul Business students, faculty, alumni, and the surrounding business community — unveiled a new center, a new director and a new strategic plan to the Chicago Metro and beyond.
Since launched in 2003, CEC has fostered innovation — working closely with faculty from DePaul’s nationally ranked academic program in entrepreneurship, the center has helped students and alumni start-up new businesses. However, the center didn’t have a centralized location or space.
CEC’s new HQ is located on the seventh floor of DePaul Center on the university’s Loop Campus. According to Bruce Leech, MBA ‘81, the CEC’s new executive director, the center’s new space is the perfect hub for the innovation ecosystem cultivated by the CEC.
Leech added:
“When I joined the center eight years ago (as an advisory board member) we were in a small office the size of a closet on the eighth floor… This is the first time we have nearly 4,000 square feet, and we’re not renting out someone’s conference room or sharing office space. This is our stake in the ground and we’re so excited to bring students, faculty and businesses together in this new space.”
Designed with modern start-ups in mind, CEC’s interior is a highly adaptable co-working space that can be converted to an 80-seat event room with big-screen projector or a classroom for business students with ease.
CEC shares its space with another organization: The Sheikh Faisal Center for Entrepreneurship in the Middle East. The Driehaus College of Business launched this organization in 2014 with a gift from Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani of Qatar and has coordinated trips to Qatar for DePaul MBA students to connect with budding entrepreneurs in Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries.