The Chicago-based Coleman Foundation has pledged up to $2.5 million to DePaul University over the next five years and has challenged the university to raise an additional $1.5 million to fund the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center at DePaul’s College of Commerce.

“This new Coleman Foundation pledge allows DePaul to create a comprehensive center that will educate students in entrepreneurship, link aspiring entrepreneurs to resources for establishing new enterprises and enhance DePaul’s entrepreneurship outreach and research,” said Management Professor Harold Welsch, DePaul’s Coleman Chair in Entrepreneurship. “The center’s trademark will be its ability to integrate the many institutional specialists who will lend their expertise by partnering with us to take these businesses to the next level.”

“A network of DePaul faculty, experienced entrepreneur mentors and center partners who are sanctioned, credible service providers is being formed to provide DePaul entrepreneurs with crucial support.” Welsch explained. “They will offer guidance and consultation in areas that include business planning, technology development, creativity, marketing, banking, accounting and financial services, as well as assistance with governmental and legal matters.”

Through collaborations with other programs, such as DePaul’s Egan Urban Center, the Coleman Entrepreneurship Center also will develop entrepreneurship initiatives and research that encourages economic development in the Chicago area. In addition, the center will arrange internships that link students seeking practical knowledge and Chicago area business owners seeking assistance with business planning, marketing strategy and research.

DePaul has a longstanding relationship with the Coleman Foundation, which made its first grant to the university in 1982. The foundation has approved over $2.125 million in prior grants to DePaul to establish the Coleman Chair in Entrepreneurship, support campus and community entrepreneurship programs and provide educational scholarships for Hispanic students at DePaul.

“The foundation looks for strategic partnerships and for initiatives that advance significant programs and maximize change,” said Michael Hennessy, president and chief executive officer of the Coleman Foundation. “Entrepreneurship education has become a mainstream activity. There are active programs in large universities and smaller liberal arts colleges nationwide.

DePaul offered its first entrepreneurship course in 1982. Today, 350 students are enrolled in the entrepreneurship program,which offers 16 undergraduate and graduate entrepreneurship courses taught by eight faculty members. The program, which includes an MBA concentration in entrepreneurship, has been recognized by Success magazine as one of the five best in the nation. Entrepreneur magazine named DePaul as one of the “Top 100 U.S. Colleges and Universities for Entrepreneurs” among more than 700 evaluated.

The Coleman Foundation, Inc., is an independent foundation established in 1951 by Dorothy W. and J. D. Stetson Coleman, who were entrepreneurs and former owners of Fannie May Candy Co. Beginning in 1981 and following the Colemans’ deaths, a board of directors initiated an active grant-making campaign to support educational programs, including those that have helped aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs, medical and research programs supporting cancer patients and their families, and community initiatives benefiting the developmentally disabled.

While the foundation focuses primarily on the Midwest, it has supported entrepreneurship education programs on college campuses across the nation and has developed Coleman chairs and professorships in entrepreneurship at 11 universities and colleges. These programs have nurtured new campus and community initiatives and a legion of new entrepreneurs who exemplify the foundation’s commitment to promoting self-determination, self-reliance, self-respect and individual initiative through self-employment and business ownership.