The 2010 Olympus Innovation Award winners were announced at a ceremony at the NCIIA Annual Conference on March 26 in San Francisco.
Visit our Youtube channel to see the winners talk about their awards.
Olympus and NCIIA congratulate:
Paul Hudnut, an Entrepreneurship instructor at Colorado State University’s College of Business, won the 2010 Olympus Innovation Award for his creation and development of the Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise Program (GSSE), a speciaized three-semester graduate business program that trains students to become global social entrepreneurs. In teaching, Hudnut uses his start-up experience to help inform and inspire budding entrepreneurs about starting new ventures, and their power to change the world. One such venture is Envirofit, which sells products in India and the Philippines that increase incomes and reduce pollution. Hudnut’s leadership in starting the GSSE program at CSU, as well as sharing his ideas about innovation and entrepreneurship at other universities, has been widely recognized and appreciated by faculty and students. The Olympus Innovation Award recognizes a faculty member who fosters an environment of innovative thinking among students through inventive teaching methods, projects and case studies.
Jerry Engel, adjunct professor at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, was granted the Olympus Lifetime of Educational Innovation Award for his leadership in establishing The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, of which he is the faculty director and founder. One of the first entrepreneurship programs at any U.S. business school, the Lester Center has taught and inspired hundreds of Haas student entrepreneurs over nearly 20 years. Through emphasizing technology entrepreneurship and experiential learning, Engel’s creation and development of the Global Entrepreneurship Education Initiative, which has trained more than 800 international engineering, science and business faculty through more than 45 seminars in 22 countries, has had an impact on students and faculty all over the world. Additionally, Engel utilized his experience abroad to help launch and improve entrepreneurship programs at numerous universities around the world. The Olympus Lifetime of Educational Innovation Award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained contribution throughout their careers to stimulating and inspiring innovative thinking in students in their own universities and throughout academia.
Dr. Jeffrey Blander, course co-director HST939, Division of Health Science and Technology, Harvard Medical School and MIT, captured the Olympus Emerging Educational Leader Award. This award recognizes an individual who has greatly inspired innovative thinking in students and whom the judges believe has significant potential to make important future contributions to the field. Dr. Blander is recognized for his course, Designing Technology Innovation for Global Health Practice. The course works closely with field-based partners in developing countries and the U.S., nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and industry sponsors which enable teams of students to work on projects that prioritize grassroots solutions to address "real world" problems. The first two years of enrollment included more than 80 students from across MIT and Harvard, with 20 projects in eight developing country settings. Dr. Blander’s professional passion extends far beyond the classroom in his role as director of the Bienmoyo foundation. In this role Dr. Blander has expanded training and cultural exchange programs for students and professionals to implement solutions that improve the quality of life of patients and create new sustainable business models in health care in Tanzania.
We will begin accepting nominations for the 2011 Olympus Innovation Awards on September 7, 2010. Stay tuned!
