Penn State pencils in showcase week

Penn State University (PSU) on Monday announced its inaugural Startup Week, a showcase of more than 85 events aimed at helping faculty, staff and students get started with their entrepreneurial ideas.

Nine academic colleges and two administrative units have events planned for the week, which will focus on the theme of overcoming perceived barriers to startup success.

Each event will fall into one of the week’s thematic tracks: advancing the arts and humanities, driving digital innovation, enhancing health, stewarding our planet’s resources, transforming education and impacting the world.

Attendees will be able to participate in workshops, mentoring sessions and student pitch competitions, all delivered by industry leaders.

The keynote speaker is PSU alumnus John Finegan, founder of Beck Ag, a marketing and communications company focused on creating connections within the agricultural industries to facilitate behaviour change and technology adoption.

Other speakers include Steve Huffman, chief executive and co-founder of social news aggregation website Reddit and co-founder of online travel company Hipmunk, Karen Quintos, chief customer officer of computer technology company Dell and Ted Gonder, founder of financial education non-profit Moneythink.

The event, which will run from April 17 to April 21, is an expansion of the PSU College of Information Sciences and Technology’s IST Startup Week, which was created to celebrate a $400,000 gift to support student entrepreneurs from David Rusenko, PSU alumnus and co-founder of Weebly, the web-hosting service featuring a drag and drop website builder.

Eric Barron, president of Penn State University, said: “Penn State Startup Week will build on the university’s continuing efforts to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Our goal is to inspire students to pursue entrepreneurial careers and to equip them with the resources and tools they need to succeed.”