U of T Entrepreneurship wins big at GCEC Conference in Boston
The University of Toronto has been recognized as best-in-class by one of the leading international organizations for entrepreneurship in post-secondary education. Members of the University of Toronto Entrepreneurship (UTE) community attended the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centres (GCEC) conference last week, hosted by Babson College in Boston, Massachusetts.
At the event, which was attended by over 700 delegates representing over 300 schools, UTE was recognized with the “Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation” award and Highly Commended in the “Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across Disciplines” category.
“Receiving not one, but two accolades with so many of our global peers in the audience was a proud moment, not only for our team and U of T, but also for Canada”. says Jon French, Director, U of T Entrepreneurship. This is also validation that the U of T approach to creating multiple entry points to entrepreneurship across the tri-campus is working.”
The Outstanding Contributions to Venture Creation award recognizes the UTE network of 12 campus accelerators and the mentorship, programming and funding they provide. The Community now supports almost 1,000 entrepreneurial teams annually – up from 390 in 2019.
U of T’s award application highlighted the breadth and depth of program content, the diversity of our ecosystem, state-of-the-art workspaces, and a high level of community engagement across the university and with external partners.
Several of the initiative that help to drive venture creation and growth include Entrepreneurship Week’s True Blue Expo, the Desjardins Startup Prize, Investor Office Hours, RBC Momentum Grants, the Deep Tech Download investor newsletter and several initiatives designed to support and elevate underrepresented communities through awards and intentional programming for Black, Indigenous, and female-focused founders.
The recognition for “Exceptional Activities in Entrepreneurship Across Disciplines” category can be credited to a long list of activities such as the U of T Intellectual Property Education Program, U of T Startup Job Board, Toronto Music Entrepreneurship Exchange (ToMEE), and over 200 for-credit courses that relate to innovation.
U of T was one of over 100 schools who applied to GCEC’s major awards and with these awards, join an impressive list of previous recipients that include Stanford, New York University, Cornell, Pennsylvania State, Yale and more.