SCE students and faculty will soon have a state-of-the-art prototyping and product development facility on the UMKC campus, a vision championed by many at UMKC, including SCE Dean Kevin Truman and Development Director Minda Mason who helped to create the partnerships needed to achieve this goal. UMatters reports Gov. Jay Nixon announced on May 12th that he is releasing $7.4 million to allow construction of the new Robert W. Plaster Free Enterprise Center at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The state funds represent the public half of funding for the $14.8 million building, funded under a 50-50 matching program for public-private partnerships to fund capital projects at public colleges and universities in Missouri. Multi-million dollar grants from the Robert W. Plaster Foundation of Lebanon, Mo., and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation are providing the private half of the match. JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced last year that it would donate a $50,000 grant for tech equipment for the center, including 3D printers to help it develop new products.
Envisioned as prototyping and product development hub, the Free Enterprise Center, will be available to entrepreneurs, local industry, and high school and college students as they pursue entrepreneurial ventures. The multi-disciplinary center will serve the School of Computing and Engineering and the Henry W. Bloch School of Management, UMKC’s fastest-growing academic units, and provide a platform for invention, research and education for entrepreneurs, educators, researchers, industry and students. The Free Enterprise Center will include laboratory space, rapid prototyping equipment and educational/collaborative space. The center also will support business and technology transfer advisors to serve students, faculty and researchers from both schools, as well as local industries, entrepreneurs, artists and K-12 students.
The KC STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Alliance within the School of Computing and Engineering is reaching more than 13,000 middle and high school students in the Kansas City region. This center would provide the KC STEM Alliance space to work with high school students on projects that involve robotics, manufacturing, material science and engineering design. UMKC Enactus students, who compete in entrepreneurial challenges, will work with these students on the entrepreneurial and business aspects of technology and manufactured products and projects. The facility also will be used as a laboratory, incubator and prototyping center for all students within the School of Computing and Engineering and all entrepreneurship students within the Bloch School of Management. For the complete story see the UMKC Today article, “Free Enterprise Center Advances”, and the Kansas City Star article, “UMKC gets $7.4 million in matching state money to build incubator for free enterprise”.
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