Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative

The Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative (CEI) offers a wide range of programs and activities to help UNC students, faculty and staff learn to create successful ventures of all kinds — commercial, social, scientific and artistic.

Experiential learning opportunities, speaker series, faculty forums and research opportunities keep the UNC community in close touch with successful entrepreneurs and engaged in continuous dialogue of what it means to be entrepreneurial.

CEI currently offers these programs for faculty, staff and students in collaboration with departments and faculty across campus:

• Carolina Challenge offers teams of UNC faculty, staff and students the chance to compete for $50,000 in prize money for their entrepreneurial ventures.
• Entrepreneurship Minor offers non-business students the basic knowledge, tools and experience to launch a new venture for an economic, social, scientific or artistic return.
• Faculty Fellowships provide semester leaves for faculty to pursue entrepreneurship research.
• Faculty Seminars offer faculty and staff a forum for examining the place of entrepreneurship in higher education today.
• First-Year Seminars provide UNC freshmen intense interaction with faculty and a project-based format to delve deeply into selected topics related to entrepreneurship.
• Innovations Fund competitively awards funding to faculty to develop new CEI programs.
• Launch Program helps faculty and staff develop a business plan and the skills needed to launch a new venture.
• Minority Entrepreneurship Research focuses on advancing the growth of minority-owned enterprises by expanding academic research, training, community outreach and business development programs.
• Research Seminars provide a forum for the latest research related to entrepreneurship in a wide range of disciplines.
• Social Justice Entrepreneurship Incubator provides UNC students with seed funding, mentoring, faculty consultations and learning circles for social action enterprises.
• Speaker Series brings to campus successful entrepreneurs and scholars who offer practical advice and experience to inspire and guide students, faculty and staff in their entrepreneurial aspirations.
• Thursday Lunches are weekly discussing and networking sessions for UNC-Chapel Hill’s growing entrepreneurial community — faculty, staff, students, alumni, entrepreneurs and community members.
• Undergraduate Research provides stipends for research projects that move beyond discovery to produce products and services with real and lasting value.

For more information, visit www.unc.edu/cei or contact the Kenan Institute, which manages the initiative, at 919.962.8201 or