Barbara Glazer Weinstein and Jerome S. Glazer Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Learning Community

A Fellowship of Students, Faculty and Staff Dedicated to the Discovery and Celebration of the Innovative Potential in All of Us...

Creativity: The action and result of imagination and ingenuity; the ability to create through the relation of previously unrelated ideas or things; the application of a person's mental ability and curiousity to discover something new.

Innovation: The introduction of something new; the development of new processes, methods, devices, products, and services for a useful purpose.

Entrepreneurship: The pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled; the process of creating value through unique resource combinations to exploit opportunity; the implementation of innovation; the utilization of the skill sets, qualities and characteristics inherent in, or acquired by, entrepreneurs.

Why CIE: Our Focus

Diversity is a cornerstone of CIE. In its first year, CIE welcomed a widely varied student population from Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship, College of Arts and Sciences, S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communications, L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, The College of Human Services and Health Professions, The School of Information Studies, The School of Visual and Performing Arts, The Whitman School of Management and the the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, including 30 percent from diversity groups and 40 percent women.

It is our belief that by exposure of first-year students to this wide variety and depth of entrepreneurial experiences and involved people, we can create a mindset rich in their benefits and enduring in their effect, so that CIE becomes not a one-year-and-out endeavor, but a four-year collegiate journey and life-long experience. It is in this way, through a philosophy of hands-on participation, leadership, invlovement and partnership that we can have a real and measurable influence on innovative and entrepreneurial education at Syracuse University and shape a larger model for personal and societal success.

About CIE

Syracuse University is a national leader in residencebased learning communities as a conduit for enhancing its students’ social and intellectual growth. The Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Living and Learning Community (CIE) was launched at SU in the Fall of 2004. The focus of the CIE is for its students’ seeing themselves as agents of change in the arts and sciences, commercial activities, technology, and also in social activities. The CIE has accomplished this by creating an environment for, and sustainable model of, student immersion in creative and entrepreneurial endeavors through collaborations, activities and channeling their entrepreneurial potential into all facets of their lives and
the greater SU community throughout each of SU’s Colleges and Schools.

Sustainability has and will come from the increasing progression of inclusion of this program in the CIE students’ lives as they travel through their university career. It was natural to adopt a model unique in its expectation that CIE students would be residential members for two years and non-residential members and upper-class mentors for their entire academic program. Thus, the CIE goal has been to encourage each student to live an entrepreneurial life ---to become a dreamer and doer.

The initial class of CIE applicants was culled from a pool of over 120 applicants of which 78 were accepted in the CIE designated floors of Dellplain Residence Hall. In order to implement an environment permeated by creativity, it was essential to transform the DellPlain Hall CIE Floor into an extraordinary facility unique to the SU campus.

This environment was achieved by underwriting (i) cosmetic changes to the floor (e.g., new CIE logo carpeting, entrance enhancements of wood paneling and unusual paint colors throughout); (ii) creation of an on-floor class and presentation room with state of the art audio-visual capabilities (computer driven, digital projection, LCD TV, surround sound, etc.) and (iii) an on-floor Resource Lab with twelve modern work stations each containing media oriented monitors and full capability state of the art creativity hardware and software (Microsoft or MAC based); high speed, high capability Okidata
color laser printers and a presentation LCD wall monitor; and (iv) the infrastructure improvements of wiring, cabling, electrical, communications and HVAC to support the Classroom and Resource Lab. This was accomplished through in-kind third-party gifts in excess of $50,000 (Intel, Microsoft, Okidata, Motion Computing and Seneca Data), financial and other support of the EEE Department and SU, and a Coleman Foundation Grant of $48,000.