The UNC College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Applied Physical Sciences is already educating the next generation of groundbreaking and entrepreneurial scientists in its nationally ranked graduate program.

Now, thanks to a nearly $600,000 grant from the Kern Family Foundation and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s inclusion in the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), the department is set to design and launch a new undergraduate program that is infused with an entrepreneurial mindset.

As a member of KEEN, the University joins the ranks of 48 partner institutions across the U.S. — including Duke University, Wake Forest University and Campbell University in North Carolina. KEEN partners share a mission to develop best practices in education and advance an entrepreneurial mindset in undergraduate students.

“UNC-Chapel Hill has made a pledge to be ‘strategic, bold, and student focused,’ and we have implemented this vision with initiatives that promote entrepreneurially minded learning to transform undergraduate education at UNC,” said Terry Rhodes, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “This makes KEEN a natural fit for our university and the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, which seeks to apply scientific discovery to real-world challenges, creating lasting value for our society. Through our relationship with KEEN, we are excited to build on our existing foundation to educate students who are prepared for the 21st-century workforce.”

Read more in this Carolina Story.

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