DePaul Celebrates One-Year Partnership with Chicago’s 1871 Startup Community
This month, DePaul University celebrates its one-year anniversary as a member of 1871, Chicago’s thriving digital startup community.
DePaul collaborates with 1871 through the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center (CEC), part of the Driehaus College of Business and other various DePaul University schools. The CEC offers students, recent alumni and faculty a number of resources.
According to the school:
“It offers students, recent alumni and faculty opportunities to use DePaul’s dedicated office space, mingle with other entrepreneurs and participate in programming at 1871. Over the past year, the DePaul office space has been used by students and faculty from each of the 10 colleges across the university.”
“The goal of our membership at 1871 is for our DePaul students to have access to the startup community in Chicago,” Bruce Leech, Executive Director of the CEC, said in a school news release. “Connecting our students, faculty and alumni to that ecosystem is our top priority. They have access to 1871’s amazing lineup of daily workshops, internship opportunities and resources to make legal, business, accounting, marketing and venture capital contacts.”
Coleman Entrepreneurship Center members at 1871.
Since starting its collaboration with 1871, CEC has been bring various startup resources to the DePaul campus. The school has hosted and participated in numerous events at 1871’s Merchandise Mart location since joining, including:
- The Entrepreneurship Symposium at 1871: Panel discussion of four entrepreneurs with DePaul ties about starting a business. Keynote speech delivered by Priceline Founder Jeff Hoffman.
- Campus 1871: Weekend-long event brought together 20 students from 1871-partner universities to create their own startups.
- Purpose Pitch Competition: Competition challenged student entrepreneurs to pitch purpose-driven business ideas.
Looking forward to the next year of collaboration, Leech says one of his goals is to bring more faculty members to 1871 by hosting workshops and being a valuable resource to their members.
“We are connecting DePaul to the startup community like never before,” Leech added. “Our alums are becoming mentors, we are partnering students up with entrepreneurs as interns this summer and we are hosting quality programming throughout the year. This has been a wonderful partnership and I look forward to what the future brings.”
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Max Pulcini
Max Pulcini is a Philadelphia-based writer and reporter. He has an affinity for Philly sports teams, Super Smash Bros. and cured meats and cheeses. Max has written for Philadelphia-based publications such as Spirit News, Philadelphia City Paper, and Billy Penn, as well as national news outlets like The Daily Beast.
